


IV. Any Friend of True Thomas is a Friend of Mine

by twistedchick



Series: Life, Refracted [4]
Category: Primeval
Genre: Alternate History, British folklore, Dinosaurs, F/M, M/M, Multi, Multiple Universe, alternate interpretation of canon, anomaly travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-15
Updated: 2016-01-15
Packaged: 2018-05-14 03:19:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 55,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5727736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twistedchick/pseuds/twistedchick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One morning Nick Cutter woke up in the universe in which he was born, went through an anomaly to the past, went through another to where he thought he had started, and found himself in an alternate Britain, facing people whose names and faces he knew but who were not the same as the ones he'd left.  Can he make them believe that he is not the same man as the one they know?  And can their shared knowledge -- from his world and their own -- prevent Helen's insane malice from causing disaster and death?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. O Brave New World

Every time I wake up now, here, I tell myself that I’m sane, although everything around me seems crazy.

Sometimes I believe myself.

But sanity and its alternatives are in the judgment of others; one can only be sane in relation to someone else. I've a strong suspicion that Robinson Crusoe, isolated on his island, was sane as long as he kept doing what was necessary to survive. And, once he made his way back to England, his eccentricities could be excused by the privations he had endured.

Would this militarized society in which I find myself excuse me as much, if I were to say all of what I knew? 

Crusoe had the comfort, so to speak, of returning to an England where there were at least a few people he’d known who knew him, people who shared his memories in the same way that he recalled them. I am in a Britain that has undergone almost unimaginable changes, from a reasonably open and peaceful mercantile society to one that has become intensely security-conscious, nationalized, with a constant military presence in daily life that is difficult to get used to – and the people I knew from before are not the ones I find, wearing the same faces. 

Perhaps I should find a copy of Defoe’s _Crusoe_ and see what political changes his country went through while he was away on his island.

I was gone from home for less than a day, a few hours through the anomaly into the Permian Era and back, and returned to changes as unimaginable as if I had gone under the hill with Thomas the Rhymer. Was he disbelieved when he returned, too, or did he learn to mend his words, ameliorate them without removing their truth, to avoid the scorn and disbelief? Truth-tellers aren’t usually made welcome, in my experience. Few want to know what’s on the other side of the mirror that’s made of time.

I have seen both sides of it, now, enough to make me wary.

Helen lived on both sides of the anomaly mirror for eight years, or so it seemed a few days ago. Did she actually live in past eras the whole time, or not? I'm not sure any more. She never could resist the lure of the road, or of an open door, or of a closed one, for that matter; it was nearly impossible to hide Christmas presents from her, before this all started. 

According to Stephen, the Stephen who is here, there are two Helens, and there might well be two of me also. I find I’m much more at ease with the notion of two Nick Cutters than of two Helen Cutters, though Stephen assures me that the Helen Cutter who was born into the place where I am now was a gentler soul as well as a brilliant scholar and instructor. 

I’m sorry I never met that Helen; I think it would have been so much easier to love her.

* * *

Stephen has an hypothesis about what happened: he thinks the anomalies lead not only from one time to another within a single universe’s chronology, but across universes, which from what little I understand of quantum theory might be possible, but only in the imagination. But who am I to argue with reality? I was somewhere else, the place where I was born and grew up, and I went to the Permian Era, and when Helen – whichever Helen it was -- led me back, she led me here. This isn’t where I was from. It doesn’t look the same. Many of the people don’t act the same way. It’s as if the place isn’t even in the same neighborhood.

Well, it’s not. It couldn’t be, could it? If I’m right and we changed something – anything -- on that hillside in the Permian Era that somehow managed to survive untold climatological, geological and ecological collapses and changes to kick us in the ass now, then there’s nothing to do but go on ahead. If Stephen is right, nothing we did back then made any difference, and this is a different reality, a different universe, with its own Permian Era.

If I went back to this world’s Permian Era, would I find Ryan’s grave and Helen’s camera? I don’t want to know. Stephen said that five Special Forces soldiers went through with me, and Helen, and that Connor and Abby gave me gifts before I went – and I know that they did no such thing. So that in itself is a difference.

O brave new world, to have such people in it.

See, that’s the crux of the matter: Helen led me here and then left me here to go … somewhere else. If I’d realized how much she’d rather be somewhere else than with me, I never would have married her, but the past is a different universe and besides the wench is – no, not dead. I don’t want to think that my life would be easier if my missing wife were dead; that’s too close to committing murder. 

Even if it’s true.

* * *

When a man has had his life turned inside out, it’s not unexpected for him to go back to the earliest things he has known in order to rebuild. For me, that’s tea with Gram, every day after school while we waited for my parents to come home from work. Gram was in her eighties, which I thought was a great age, and after she’d listen to me tell what had happened that day she’d set her cup down and tell me one of the old tales. Sometimes it was stories about heroes, like William Wallace or Rob Roy MacGregor, but more often it was stories of the Fae, of brownies and phoukas, of selkies and the Fair Folk.

In the old tales, if you went under the hill you might see people you thought you knew, but they might not know you at all. They could be faeries, the Fair Folk taking on appearances, and sometimes they were just a likeness of a person, as in the Welsh tale of Bloddeuwedd, who was made of flowers. That didn’t end well, as I recall.

And then there was the tale of True Thomas the Rhymer, who went under the hill for the love of the Queen of the Fae for seven years, and was given the gift of truth-telling when he returned – though nobody understood and most refused to believe him at all.

Need I even say which tale clings to me now?

* * *

Jenny Lewis has a few pounds on my Claudia, and excessive eyeshadow, but except for that she’s the image of her, despite the expensive clothing and more assertive manner. It’s hard to see her and realize that she doesn’t know me, like me or care a fig about me other than in a purely professional capacity. She’s glad I’m still alive because she’d hate to have to put sufficient spin on the official version of my death. Besides that? She has no care for me whatsoever.

I loved Claudia. I still do. That last public kiss was only a few days ago; I can still feel it on my lips at times.

But Jenny? I’m not sorry to say that I wasn’t displeased at how her elegant hairstyle came apart when we were dealing with the giant worms in the office building. I won’t tell her that, though; the woman has a strong hand with a katana.

* * *

My team is still mine, but they themselves aren’t the people I knew, not entirely.

Connor is the least changed – hardware and software geek with a scientific mind, incurable curiosity, and a deep and possibly hopeless love for Abby. He seems more willing to take chances, and he’s certainly a better shot than he was before. Stephen and I would be dead if he had not run into the sharp-toothed mouth of danger to shoot that raptor. Under it all he’s still a kid, I think, but not anyone’s sidekick; he is his own person, more mature than the lad I left behind.

Abby seems older than the girl I knew; here, she’s been part of the ARC since it began, not stuck in a lower-echelon job at the zoo. She has far more responsibility; she is the primary authority in charge of the wellbeing of any creatures that are isolated here, or ones that are wounded and have to heal before being sent back. This has given her an air of strength that the lizard girl of my world hadn’t yet acquired. From what I can see, she’s not romantically attached to anyone though she rents Connor a room. It’s clear that he’d like more; it’s also clear that she considers him a colleague, not a lover. None of my business, naturally, but one does make observations. I would have thought that she’d have a crush on Stephen, but that seems to have been avoided in this universe, which is probably just as well. 

Lester, under his sarcasm, seems deeply and genuinely upset about Helen’s behavior, and not just because of her actions toward me. There’s something more there that I don’t understand -- yet. He’s been fairly hands-off with me, which is fine. I prefer not to be managed. I don’t trust people who do it.

But it’s Stephen who is the most different below the surface. This isn’t my easygoing friend and hard-working associate, my lab manager still gradually working on his doctorate, working hard and playing hard but with time to debate theories over our shared tea or beer. This Stephen Hart is a driven man who finished his doctorate several years ago, who is collecting data on the relationship between certain aspects of the earth’s magnetism and the locations of anomalies in conjunction with the ARC’s staff geophysicist and geologist. My Stephen wouldn’t willingly spend time analyzing data in a computer; he’d be much more likely to want to be out on site, carefully cleaning a fossil or directing a dig. I’m sure this Stephen does that too, and is just as good at tracking creatures when asked – but there’s something different at his core, something in his heart that turned to stone from pain and loss, I think.

I know that look. I see it in the mirror every morning.

And my Stephen would have been such an easy, trusting target for Helen. I can see that now. This Stephen has a harder edge, though he says that even he was taken in for a time.

He said that his Helen and the Nick Cutter he knew had an open marriage. I can’t imagine it. The Helen I know was always possessive – even before she became pathological. She wasn’t above making comments about it if I seemed too interested in someone else. I should have remembered that when Claudia kissed me in front of her. I should have found a way to stop Claudia – but how could I?

And if I had, would I be back with Claudia now?

* * *

I need to get my feet under me at the ARC. A hundred or more people work there and I don’t know them. I don’t know their areas of specialization or their projects. Since Lester doesn’t (apparently) know about the multiple-universe theory, he’s suggested I get counseling. Thank you very much, but no. 

Instead, I’ve asked Connor, Abby and Stephen to bring me up to speed (Lester’s words) on who is doing what. So far that’s helpful. I’m also reviewing more of the paperwork that crosses my desk, to the apparent amazement of the two administrative assistants whom I share with six other department heads, none of whose names I have straight yet.

It would be so much easier to do the work if Jenny Lewis would quit walking past in the hallway. Glass buildings have their disadvantages.

* * *

Gram would have liked to hear of today’s anomaly. I wish I could tell her.

It opened in a cleared space near the Long Stone in the Forest, just after dawn. That area has had several anomalies in recent months, some of them very small and apparently opening for a few minutes only, detectable by Connor’s gear but otherwise unremarkable, as well as larger ones open for a few hours. Because so many of them show up there, even though nothing usually comes through, Connor set up a detector there – one of his new gizmos – that assesses the size of the anomaly and reports on how long it is active; if it’s open more than a minute, we swing into alert mode and get there.

And today, we arrived just in time to see a weary Irish elk, antlers more than two meters across, stumbling out of the glow into the grass, draw a labored breath and keep running, pursued by two dire wolves.

Abby brought down one of the wolves with a tranquilizer, Connor got the other just before it would have leaped onto the elk’s back. The elk saw the Range Rovers and the people, shied, stumbled, turned to see that the wolves were down, and stood, legs trembling, head lowered. Perhaps it would have charged if it weren’t so exhausted. 

As it stood, wild-eyed and wobbling with exhaustion, Stephen walked up nearly within striking distance of that rack of antlers. “You beauty,” he said, and shot it in the neck with the tranq pistol. It collapsed slowly, as if going to its knees to sleep, with its head forward.

Abby and Connor waited until it was down, then took small wheeled carts from the back of one of the vehicles; with the help of some of the soldiers they got the drugged wolves onto the carts and shoved them unceremoniously back into the anomaly. 

The anomaly flickered.

Connor, who had been concentrating on his instruments, said, “It’s closing.”

“Let it close,” Stephen said, as the anomaly disappeared.

We stood on the hillside surrounding the sedated elk.

“Can you reopen the anomaly?” I asked.

Connor shrugged. “This one opens once a fortnight, almost on a schedule. We can take this guy back with us, feed him, let him rest and then turn him loose in two weeks.” He waved to one of the soldiers. “We’re going to need the lorry.” The soldier nodded, waved to someone behind him, and a lorry rolled forward. As if it were routine, Stephen directed the soldiers as they moved the enormous elk into the back of the lorry. Abby checked on its condition, nodded to the soldiers, got into the truck and they left.

“Are you sure you actually need me out here?” I didn’t seem to have much to do.

Stephen’s eyebrows rose. “You … haven’t done that much in the field. Not all the time.”

“So when I was chasing the raptor with you –“

“Not your usual methodology. You’ve been more involved with theory lately; we were doing the field work. Helen --” He stopped as if he’d bitten his tongue.

“You can say her name around me.” It wasn’t as if I could ignore whatever had gone on there. “If I’m not out at the anomalies with you, what do I do?”

Connor, who was going to various bits of technology in the open field and checking readings, straightened. “You figure things out. Not that you don’t come out and wrangle critters but you and I have been working on coming up with a general theory of anomalies.”

Ah. A general theory of anomalies. I suppose they didn’t expect Einstein to wrangle his own atoms, either.

“Thanks for going to bat for me with Lester on building the anomaly detector,” Connor continued. “I’m nearly done with that.”

“We aren’t expected directly back, are we?” A glimmer of an idea was coming to mind. “Will Lester have kittens if we stop off for a bite to eat?”

Stephen shook his head. “He won’t care. Abby will be there first.” He flipped his mobile on. “Lester? Abby’s heading back with an exhausted Irish elk; she’ll probably go to the zoo first and see it into temporary quarters. We’ll be back after lunch.” He closed the phone. “There. Lester’s managed.”

Managing the manager. Oh, that made me happy.

“Pub or tea room?” I asked. “Or – perhaps you should suggest a place.”

“The Crow and Garter,” Connor said. “They have wonderful chips.”

“Crow and garter? Not cross and garter?”

Stephen shook his head. “The sign is a crow, with some girl’s wedding garter in its beak. Family story of the owners, I think.”

The Crow and Garter was located in the 16th Century inn that I recalled as housing the Cross and Garter, a pub catering to the military officers and men stationed a few kilometers away. This was a tea room, rather than a pub, taking advantage of its ancient diamond-paned windows and a few later look-alikes to light its cheerful dining area. We settled at a table in the back, where there was a clear view of the entire room; the kitchen seemed to be small enough that a spare person would have been run over by the cook working there. 

Besides us, there were two tables of ladies of my mum’s generation, a pair of students, some escaped office workers and a couple whom I thought I recognized as farmers in my own world. In that room with its pale lemon striped wallpaper, there was no place for Helen to lurk in a dark corner and listen in. The walls were half-meter-thick stone, and the windows were closed.

Privacy from Helen. I liked that.

Stephen and Connor were debating the football scores. I glanced over a newspaper sports page that discussed the possible success of the teams playing for the ashes; I wasn’t a die-hard cricket fan, but it was comforting to have one thing that hadn’t changed that much. And then when the food came, I said, “I want to do a longitudinal study, and I need your help.”

“Sure.” Stephen added a bit more horseradish to his roast beef sandwich. “You know we’ve already got the chronology of anomalies.”

“Lots of data on them, though I hope to have more when the next generation of technology is in the field,” Connor said between bites of fish and chips.

“That’ll come into it, but I’m thinking about a different sort of chronology.” Both of them nodded. “I want to plot out the timing of the anomalies, and their eras and locations against what I remember from … wherever I was. And I want to plot all of this against Helen’s comings and goings, both what I remember and what happened here after she returned to you.”

Stephen was still for a moment. “Your theory or mine?”

“I think this may clarify that.”

“What are you talking about?” Connor asked. “Here, Cutter, try one of the chips. You didn’t get any with your steak-and-kidney.”

The chip was excellent, perfectly cooked and not greasy. “I have a hypothesis: I think some of the anomalies are naturally occurring – or at least not something anyone has interfered with –and some were opened because Helen did something. But to verify this, we need to know where she was and when.”

“How? I mean, how would she do it?” The inventor’s wheels were turning behind Connor’s eyes.

“Don’t know, yet. But I think it would be good to know if it’s possible.” My mouth burned on the tea, which was still smoking hot. “She’s not likely to be messing with anomalies in public, however she was doing it, so we look at any time period that can be accounted for and see what happened during it, and match it with what I recall.

“How good is your memory for dates?” Stephen asked, concerned.

“If I do it by association, pretty good. For instance, I’ve looked at the records you’ve kept, and I don’t remember either an aurochs or entelodonts coming through any anomaly, any time. However, I do recall a pteranodon on a golf course last month; it got loose over the city, and we had to get up on a roof and tranquilize it before Lester’s military boys got there to kill it. You had a terrible time shooting at it, Stephen, and we ended up waving your red shirt at it as bait to draw it in.”

Connor’s eyes were wide. “A pteranodon! Wow!”

“It nearly had Rex for lunch, but we were all concerned because it looked as if was heading toward you, Connor. You were running across a golf course at the time.”

“But pteranodons don’t eat large prey,” Connor put in, “I think.”

“They don’t,” Stephen said. “Small reptiles.”

“And there were also some crow-sized or raven-sized pterosaurs, a huge murder of them, that stripped the flesh from people and nearly had me and Claudia for a snack. And Helen was there.” Helen had saved Claudia by setting the creatures on fire with a leaky gas jet. “So, if you haven’t had something like that happen –“

“We haven’t,” Stephen said.

“Then we can plot it against Helen’s comings and goings here and see what happens.

“There’s this one thing, Cutter,” Connor said, his expression thoughtful. “If it’s possible to travel through time and across universes – which may be so, I’m in experimental mode here –“

“Understood,” I said.

“And if Helen has the ability not only to do that kind of travel but to set it up in advance somehow –“

Stephen slanted a look at me that said he hadn’t talked in detail with Connor at all.

“—then what’s to keep her from going anywhere at any time, irregardless of whatever time or place she happens to be in at the start?”

“I don’t know,” I conceded. “But I can tell you that time travel is very tiring. Maybe there’s some record of any particular times when Helen looked more than usually worn down?”

“I can check on that,” Stephen said. “I can talk with the sergeant in charge of the security tapes.”

“Good thought. And there is one other thing I do know, Connor –“ I picked up my fork, which held the last bit of pastry and meat. “Irregardless isn’t a word.”

"I knew that," Connor said, with a twinkle in his eye.

* * *

I knew my timeline would differ from theirs; that was expected. Even Helen couldn’t quite be in two places at once. But the differences were intriguing.

In my world, Helen had disappeared eight years – no, now it’s nine years – earlier. By her own account and by the evidence we assembled later, she was chased into the first known anomaly by a mosasaur. She was alone at the time in the Forest of Dean, researching anomalies, and it was night.

In this world, their Helen was alone, researching anomalies in what might well be the same part of the Forest of Dean if that Forest had not been cut, burned for charcoal, turned to farmland and developed over the centuries, as mine had. The Forest here is immensely larger than the one I knew, and more heavily forested; it covers the entire western half of the county, plus a bit leading into Wales. Their Helen was out alone by chance; Stephen, who usually accompanied her, was with Connor checking on hyracotheria, and then with Abby as well. It was a full three years after my Helen had disappeared, and it was early morning. Daylight.

I don’t think this is a coincidence. I also think that it’s significant that she was alone and that it was daytime. Why should a mosasaur come through here from the Permian, when the primary incursions in this version of Britain have been creatures from millions of years later, entelodonts and aurochs? Although I have to admit that the presence of Rex does point to an earlier Permian anomaly.

Could Helen have come here, possibly several times, without being noticed or recognized? Is it possible that she chose to arrive here when she did, because she knew there would be a place for her? Could she have arranged for the mosasaur to come to this world when it did, precisely in order to get rid of this world’s Helen and make room for herself?

The thought chilled me so much that I had to get up immediately and go down to get coffee; but I folded the small notebook and put it back into my jacket pocket.

* * *

We only discussed the chronology when we were in places that Stephen or Connor thought that Helen would not know about, would be unfamiliar with or would actively dislike. She hated art galleries – “crypts of dead culture” – so the four of us visited the coffee bar in the basement of the Oak Grove Gallery one afternoon. Connor told Abby about it, probably at her flat, and she dropped by my desk later long enough to say that she thought the new study was a good idea. Leek overheard, and asked what it was about, so I told him it was a longitudinal study of the occurrence of anomalies in specific locations. I’m not sure he even understood the words “longitudinal study”, because he made some comment about latitude and longitude over his shoulder as he left.

It’s a good thing Lester doesn’t have us punching timecards – we’d be busted for sure. But we were out late the day before; an anomaly opening about four feet off the ground in early evening dumped a considerable amount of water and some extremely confused fish into a clearing. The anomaly closed after a few minutes, but it took several hours to make sure that nothing other than fish had swum through and that all of the ones that had flopped onto the grass were sufficiently dead and could be sent back to the ARC.

“You’re not going to like this,” I said, once we were all settled around the table. “I think my Helen set up yours.”

“How?” Stephen demanded. Abby looked confused, Connor speculative.

“I think she planned to come here, and she somehow set up your Helen to disappear. I don’t know how, yet. But let me show you what I’ve found.” I showed them what I’d found, the patterns of coming and going, the way the different times lined up.

Abby and Stephen exchanged looks. 

“What?” I asked.

Abby said, “Stephen and I found a cache, up in a tree in the Forest, late last year. It was survival gear, and it was hers. And it matched what she was carrying when she left that day with Cutter – and what she had with her when she came here with you and left again.”

“I checked, about two weeks after that day,” Stephen said, “and the hiding place in that tree was empty.”

“You never told me!” Connor complained to Abby.

“You’ve got no poker face at all,” she replied. “If I’d told you that Stephen and I thought Helen might be an imposter, could you have kept it to yourself?”

“I wouldn’t have said anything!”

“But you couldn’t keep it out of your face,” she said gently. “I didn’t want Helen to start to think of you or me as enemies.”

“Let’s get back to business, shall we?” I took out my little notebook and opened it on the table, and they all turned their heads to peer at it. “Since we can’t make guesses about Helen’s ability to jump back and forth without evidence, let’s look at the data we have.”

“We need some way to tell them apart when we talk about them,” Stephen said. 

“Agreed,” Abby said.

“Such as?” I looked at Stephen. It was obvious to me that he was wrestling with deep emotions, as Abby leaned her shoulder against his. He shook his head once and stared at the table.

“For lack of anything better, how about last names? The Helen who started out in this universe kept her maiden name for professional use at the University, though she took your name in her private life. Call her Farquhar, call yours Helen Cutter.” His eyes met mine, stormcloud blue. “If that works for you.”

“It works fine for me, though you may have to remind me if I get confused.”

“You won’t be the only one,” Connor said. “You were saying, professor?”

“Let’s assume for the sake of argument that Helen Cutter went into the anomaly system first, by accident, nine years ago where I came from –“

“Wait, are we assuming multiple universes or shifting timelines now?” Connor asked.

“Since Nick came from a place that gave him different memories and different experiences, for the sake of hypothesis let’s assume that it’s another universe for now even if that’s technically not true,” Stephen said. “I’m working on a theory.”

The other two nodded. “Go ahead, please,” Abby said.

“Now, I don’t know if she was traveling through anomalies before that – we weren’t on the best of terms and we were having some tremendous arguments about her going away so much – but I can be fairly certain that she wasn’t able to control where she was going. At that point she didn’t have the ability to know what was on the other side of an anomaly before stepping through it, and she likely couldn’t control how long it stayed open, either.”

“So why was she doing it?” Abby asked.

“I think she had some notion about putting together a map or a compendium or, for lack of a better description, a hitchhiker’s guide to anomaly travel – where each one opened, what resources were available, what creatures to avoid, all that sort of thing. She used to keep a notebook with her and scribble in it.” 

“That would be terribly useful, if it still exists,” Connor said. “Depending, of course, on what’s in it.”

“Well, we don’t know that. I haven’t actually seen the notebook in a while; she had it a few months ago – my time – when she was trying to seduce me into abandoning the University and going off with her on a tour of the geological eras. I didn’t trust her then, she’d been away for years without a word to me, and so I didn’t go.”

“Good for you,” Abby murmured.

I gave her a small smile. “Aye, as you say.”

“Wait a minute – you said she was in your time and place a few months ago? She was here all that time, wasn’t she?” Connor took out his Blackberry and checked the calendar. “But there was that week when she had the virus and stayed home a few days.”

“Well, there you have it.” Stephen leaned back in his chair, shaking his head. “She obviously didn’t stay home, did she?”

“I will say, she wasn’t wearing her usual safari gear, but newer clothes, things I hadn’t seen before. They had to have come from somewhere. But we’re getting off track again.”

“Anyone want more tea?” the waiter asked, large pot in hand. He came around, filled up the cups, refilled the little pitcher of milk, and went back behind the counter.

“Go on, Nick.” Stephen nodded encouragement to me.

“So. We start out assuming that she went to the Permian, because of the mosasaur, and that she wandered around there until she found another anomaly, then went through it to another era, and another, and so on. Let’s assume a few years, all right? Then what could have changed?”

Abby shook her head. 

Connor said, “Could she have gotten to the future at that point? Maybe she went through an anomaly to the future, but only stayed long enough to grab some technology and leave?”

“That’s one possibility,” I said. “Anything else?”

Stephen said slowly. “If we allow for the possibility of alternate universes, and assume that there are two Helens, and perhaps two Nick Cutters as well –“ he hesitated, as Abby’s eyes widened “why stop at two? There could be a theoretically infinite number of each of us out there.”

“Scary,” Connor said.

Stephen held up a hand to regain the floor. “Nick, you and I talked about the evidence I found that distinguished Farquhar from Helen Cutter. Let me ask you this: how sure are you that the Helen Cutter who came back through the anomalies in your time and place was the one you married?”

I put the cup down too fast; it sloshed into the saucer. “That’s an excellent question, and not exactly comfortable to answer.” I stared at the windowsill, where the paint was beginning to crack on the left corner, while my entire life with Helen flickered before my mind's eye. “Without going into detail, I can say I’m reasonably sure it was the same Helen with whom I’d been married for a few years. She had the same memories as I did; she knew where to find things in my world, in our house. And her … behavior was very familiar.” I rubbed my hand over my face as if that would erase the unwanted memory of Helen in that shirt, that last time. “What I think happened is that somehow she got her hands on some gadget that let her figure out where the anomalies went, and she spent a long time playing with it and wandering around.”

“Now, that makes sense.” Connor pressed more buttons on his PDA. “When you first talked about the chronology, I uploaded all of the talks she gave and the papers she wrote about her travels, and put them into order a few different ways. I can tell you which eras she described, and in how much detail, which ones she avoided talking about, and what sort of living conditions she said she had. I can sift this a bit more and get back to you about it.”

“That's brilliant, Connor, thank you. Let me summarize the rest of this: I think that she didn’t learn all of it at once. I think whatever device she had didn’t come with a manual; it might not even have operated in a language she understood easily. So there was a significant learning curve, and meanwhile she still had to survive in hostile environments.” 

“It’s also reasonable to assume that if she did get to the future that early on and encountered the predators there, she couldn’t find her way back.” Stephen pushed his plate aside. “Maybe the anomaly to that time only opens in the Permian Era. Did you see it there?”

I shook my head. “Helen said she had found it, but I told her I wasn’t going. I was pretty upset at what happened to Ryan and his men, and at us making our own history there.”

“What do you mean, making your own history.” Abby looked puzzled.

“I’d been to the Permian before, with Ryan, to try to return your Rex to his own time,” I told her. “When we were there we found the remains of a camp, and skeletons buried there, and Helen’s old camera, which made me think she was dead until she showed up at night at the University and left a living ammonite on my desk.”

“A living ammonite? Wow.” Connor's eyes went round.

“You were there before?” Abby asked. She shook her head. “That never happened here. You never tried to take Rex back to his home at all.”

“What happened to the ammonite?” Connor asked. 

“I suppose it’s still in the seawater aquarium in the department’s office; I hope someone remembers to feed the fish.”

“If you went to the Permian twice from your time and place,” Stephen said, “and you realized the second time that there had been a first time, then I think we can safely assume that you were within your universe’s timeline. That leads me to believe that Helen purposely closed the anomaly from your own time that got you there and opened up another one that brought you here.”

“Why would she do that?” Connor looked confused.

“She was pretty mad at me that I wouldn’t go time-traveling with her, and she was mad at me about some other things, too. I suppose this was her way of punishing me.” My mobile chimed, and I picked it up. “Hello?”

“Cutter, sorry to interrupt your three-martini lunch, but some kind of flying lizard is apparently buzzing the fairways at the local golf course.”

“Right. We’ll be there. I may know what to do with this one.”

“Well, that is what we pay you for.” Lester sounded more testy than usual.

“Send flamethrowers along with the boys with the guns. And a red flag on a long pole.”

“Barbecue, for the whole ARC? Cutter, you’re too generous.”

“Only if we have to. Cutter out.”

We were halfway to the Range Rover when Stephen said, “Flamethrowers? What are we dealing with?”

“If we’re lucky,” I told him, “it’s a confused pteranodon that’s looking for a mate or for home. Bring your tranq rifle. And if we’re not lucky, it brought friends with it.”

“What kind of friends?” Abby asked as she climbed into the back seat with Connor.

“Rhamphorhynchus, or something similar. Think of a murder of crows, then give them teeth and the desire to tear apart anyone on which they smell blood, even one drop.”

Abby shuddered. Connor grinned, then sobered. “You’ve met them before.”

“Aye, and it's no fun at all.”

* * *

When we arrived, the news was far better than last time. The anomaly was clearly visible above the ninth tee, guarded by Special Forces, and it was a good fifty meters above the ground, which made it a little less likely that a stray _T. rex_ might decide to wander through. 

The manager of the golf course was distraught. “How are we going to hold the tournament here tomorrow with badly behaved animals bothering the guests?”

“Tell me what the animals look like,” I said, and he described a flying reptile with a long neck, a long beak, enormous wings and a red crest on its head. This sounded so much like the pteranodon I’d seen a few months ago in another universe, red crest and all. “All right. It’s a rare species, not generally found in Britain, and I can tell you that it eats small animals, like marmots and weasels, not people. We’ll do our best to take care of it. But did you see anything else?”

“Like what?” The man looked puzzled.

“A bunch of odd-looking black birds, flying in a cloud like starlings but each bird was the size of a crow.”

He shook his head. “Nothing like that. Not that I’ve seen.”

“Good! That’s very good.” My shoulder muscles had been tight with worry; I could feel them begin to relax. “Go on back to the clubhouse, and we’ll take care of things.” I waved to the SFs and one of them broke away to accompany him.

Another SF walked over to us with the flag I’d requested. “You wanted this for something, sir?”

“Yeah,” I told him. “When you see that flying reptile, you wave that flag as high as you can, as close to the anomaly as possible. If we’re lucky it will fly past you and right on in.” 

“What about the flamethrowers, sir?”

“If the big guy is what I think he is, he might have brought along some unwelcome friends, and we’ll have to take care of them. They’re carnivorous, they fly very quickly, and flamethrowers work much better than guns.” I forced myself to be calm. “Tell your men not to get any blood on themselves; if someone nicks a finger, you rinse it immediately and bandage it, and throw away whatever you’ve wiped up the blood with. Otherwise, if those smaller ones are around, you’re a target and you won’t live long.”

And then the shadow of an enormous wing rippled across the ground and I looked up.

It wasn’t a pteranodon. Instead, we had our very own _Quetzalcoatlus northropi_ , with ten meters of wingspan. It did indeed have a small red crest, but it wasn’t showing any interest in the flag that the SF was hesitantly waving. Instead, it dove toward the group of us.

“Stephen –“

“We’re all targets out here.” He slung the tranq rifle over his shoulder. “Get to the trees! Stay under cover! Stay together!”

The group divided as people ran for one group of trees or another. From under a bush I peered back out at the fairway – where Abby had fallen. Connor dashed back out from cover to wave his arms to try to distract the flying reptile, which lifted slightly higher but made a turn to sweep back toward them. He grabbed Abby’s arm and pulled her and they managed to make it back into the trees before the thing landed.

 _Quetzalcoatlus_ , walking on four limbs, its enormous narrow head sweeping from side to side – it was the stuff of nightmares. Also the stuff of a paleobiologist’s dreams, but right now the nightmares took precedence. It stood twice a man's height tall, and it stalked up the fairway from the rough grass where it had landed, moving easily and making no sound beyond the swish of the grass around its limbs.

“Stephen –“

He lay a few yards from me, the tripod feet at the front of the rifle snapped down into place to support it on the ground. “Just a little closer—“

“In your own time!”

He shot just as the creature began to poke through the bushes at our side of the fairway, and the dart struck it in the neck. It knocked the dart away with one wing, took three more steps and crumpled like an old-fashioned clothes pole overloaded with Monday’s wash.

We all came out of hiding and stood around it. The SFs had their weapons ready, but to a man they were catching flies, their jaws dropped open.

“This is really cool!” Connor said. “Now what?”

I shook my head. “I honestly don’t know. What does it eat? I told the manager the info for a pteranodon because that’s what I expected from his description, but this could be entirely different. For one thing, it comes from a later era; its behavior might well be different.” I turned to Connor and Stephen. “Has anything come through from the very late Cretaceous Era before?”

“Not that I know of,” Stephen said.

“No.” Connor was decisive.

“Sir!” one of the SFs said, pointing upward.

The anomaly was gone.

Silence, and then hesitant birdsong in the trees.

“We can’t send it back.” Abby leaned down to put her hand on its neck. “We don’t know what it eats, but it was stalking us, nothing smaller. And we’ve nowhere to keep it safely, for it or us.” She was weeping quietly. “Stephen, if you would, a triple-strength shot should do it. I don’t want it to suffer.” 

Without a word, Connor put his arms around Abby while Stephen gave the creature an overdose of tranquilizer.

The SF captain, Mercer – I really must learn these people’s names – walked over to us. “What now, sir?”

“We’ll take the body back to the labs at the ARC. Would you and your men do a sweep of the area, just to make sure nothing else has come through? Take the flamethrowers, though I don’t think they may be needed now -- but best to be prepared. And stay in constant contact; those buggers are fast.”

Mercer nodded and the SFs picked up the flamethrowers and went off to patrol the course and make sure there were no other little surprises waiting for us.

The creature was surprisingly lightweight, but not as fragile as I’d expected. We got a tarp under it and carried it, the four of us, to the back of an ARC van, told the driver who to alert at the ARC, and then watched the van move down the driveway toward the road.

My mobile cheeped.

“Is everyone still in one piece?” Lester asked.

“Yes, but the creature’s dead.”

“I’m not sure how I should feel about that. What was it?”

“ _Quetzalcoatlus._ Largest known flying reptile ever, ten meter wingspan. The anomaly closed, and it had to be put down.”

“Well, then. Should I expect barbecue sauce or dissections?”

“No barbecue sauce this time, sorry. It’s on the way to the labs. The boys with guns are making a sweep to be sure that’s all there was.”

“Not quite what you were expecting, then.” Lester seemed inclined to talk, for once, so I humored him. I didn’t have anything else to do until the SFs returned.

“No.”

“Then, if I may ask, what was the business with the flag and the flamethrowers? It seemed a bit more eccentric than your usual requests, if that’s possible.”

I watched the birds moving in the trees again.

“Would you believe me if I said that an anomaly opened up over this same golf course two months ago and a pteranodon and a flock of _Rhamphorynchus_ came through and caused bloody murder?”

“Nothing like that happened here. Have you been watching old Twilight Zone reruns on the late show?”

“Nevertheless. I remember it happening. I remember using Stephen’s red shirt on a long pole to coax the pteranodon into going home. You were furious, as I recall.”

“Hmm. I usually remember when I’m furious. And the flamethrowers?”

“The _Rhamphorynchi_ were attacking people, stripping flesh from bones. I used flamethrowers on some of them. Ultimately,” I rubbed my hand over my face, “the only way to get rid of them was to lure them into the hotel kitchen and blow them up with the gas.”

“The hotel? You mean the Cathcart Arms Hotel? You blew it up? It’s on the National Registry. And I assume that if you’d blown it up today you’d let me know.” He whistled softly. “Either you’ve been getting into the good stuff in the infirmary, or I’m going to have to start believing in some of your wild theories.”

“Believe what you like.” From a sand trap near the ninth hole, Mercer gave me the all-clear sign and gestured toward the parking lot. “We’ll be back in a bit.”

* * *

Abby dropped by my office the next day. “Fancy a cup of tea?” she asked.

“I could take a break.” I closed the report I was skimming and put it back on the stack.

“I’ve had some ideas about that transportation system you were describing the other day,” she said as we went down the hall to the kitchenette. “The one for moving things through time using the anomalies.”

“Ah. Hmm?” 

She checked the water level in the electric kettle and plugged it in. “Caf or decaf?” She dropped a teabag into a mug.

“Decaf tea is the work of the devil,” I told her.

“I’ve often thought so. Herbal, then?”

“Regular PG Tips is fine.” I set up my mug and she poured the water for both of us. “You were saying?”

“Wouldn’t there be a danger of the goods getting stale? Aging? I mean, if you were to move something into the past and then forward again, there’s time involved.” She swished her teabag about in the mug, discarded it and added a sugar cube. “Maybe you send it to, say, a remote mountain in the Pleistocene Era, and five minutes later here you go back to get it but a century has passed back there. Shouldn’t it be a century older, then, and not five minutes?”

“It should, yes. Right now we’ve no way to tell.”

“But there should be a way to tell, shouldn’t there?” She took a sip. “Maybe I should ask Connor.”

“Ask Connor what?” said the man himself, gliding into the kitchenette on a skateboard.

“We’re playing with hypotheticals,” I said. “Suppose you had a crate of something and you put it into the far past in some remote area, where it sat for a century. You came back here, and five minutes later you went back to that place, picked the box up and brought it back. Here, it’s only been five minutes, but shouldn’t that box be aged an extra century? And is it possible to tell how long something has been traveling through the anomalies?”

“That’s an excellent question,” Connor said, “and the answer is that I don’t know how yet but I’ll think about it and get back to you.” And he glided out of the room again with his refilled cup.

“Maybe we need to know more about how things are dated,” Abby mused. “There’s Carbon-14, but it’s not exact. From what I understand, a reading will get you within fifty to a hundred years but not anything more precise. I can ask one of the pathologists upstairs what’s used.”

“I thought we used the military's pathologists?” Did the ARC lose that many people over the years?

"Actually, I think they work for the military but they’re stationed here because we have the best labs.”

* * *

Assume that my memory is correct, and the Helen Cutter whom I married went into the Permian Era about nine years ago, now, since she came back to mess around with us about a year ago. Assume that she wandered through various past eras as her fancy took her or necessity arose, or as the anomalies opened. (Ignore for now what Connor in my universe called ‘spaghetti junction’, the grassy field full of anomalies, because there’s no evidence that Helen wandered in and out of our universe or time through the storage locker under the stadium where it emerged.)

Somewhere, after a few years, she found a tool that let her open an anomaly to another place or time if such an anomaly had ever existed there, analogous to opening a door that had been painted over. She might not know where she was going, but maybe she could control how long the door was open. And later she’d learn to find more doors that had been painted over, ones that hadn’t been open in a long time.

Perhaps she couldn’t invent entirely new doors, then or when she showed back up in my universe; if she could have, she wouldn’t have needed us to take the predator kits back to the Permian in order to go to the future. But she did need us, which means that she could only open or close doors that already existed. Perhaps she hadn’t figured out how to manipulate the device in order to find a specific anomaly at that point; that would make sense of why she wanted us in the Permian, not that it excuses the waste of men’s lives.

Knowing Helen, I suspect that her next move was to go through every anomaly that she could open and document it in her notebook, to make her own guidebook. 

This explains why she wanted to get to the future so badly – since any technology to control anomalies in any way would have to come from the future, she would want to find more of it, or instructions on how to use it. And any other technology she could get her hands on, regardless of its use.

And this explains why she was dodging the question so hard when I tried to pin her down at the house about how she’d first encountered the predators. She hadn’t found them in the Permian at all; she’d found them in their own time, whenever that will be, and led them to the Permian. She wasn’t able to shut off the anomaly in time to stop them getting through, and then they followed her to our time.

All right. That’s a good explanation for my own universe; but we’ve already seen that events don’t always repeat themselves precisely across universes. Or, to turn the thought to an epigram, all the trees of any species are not identical. 

In order for future predators to get to this universe, they must have had a path through another era, since even Helen hasn’t yet found a direct route to the future from here. Logically, there weren’t more than two of them plus the kits, and the kits could not have survived, because if they had, it would have messed with the gene pool in unpredictable ways and we would already have known about them from the fossil record. Since there has never been fossil evidence of anything like the predators, this argues against their having established any sort of base in the Permian at all. They were only going through, only a few of them were ever there and none survived.

This means that Stephen is right about it not mattering whether the infant predators survived the attack by the gorgonopsid that killed their mother; without their mother’s care they wouldn’t have lived in that environment. And that supports the multiple universe theory that Stephen maintains is the actual situation here. Besides which, there's no other good way to explain the two known Helens, the different team members I've worked with, and the other version of me.

How did Helen manage it all? She had to attract the future predators to here, get the soldiers and my other self to go through the anomaly with her, meanwhile working the timing so she could move seamlessly from one universe to the other. Maybe there isn’t even an anomaly in this universe that goes to that future. When I think about it, the predator kits started to make noise when their mother showed up – but it’s possible that she could have come through only from our time (in either or both universes); the kits' presence in the Permian was simply a decoy to keep us from killing them beforehand and not going through the anomaly at all. 

So. 

Helen needed an excuse to go back, and nobody would have let her through otherwise. And five good men died for it, in each universe. At least, I have to assume they’re dead. From what Connor has told me, the anomaly closed an hour after they went through it, and only reopened shortly before we came back. She had to be controlling the anomalies as she wanted. As I recall, she hadn’t come down the hillside when the predator mother showed up, and she wasn’t visible much of the time when the gorgonopsid was fighting it. But after that fight, she came back down the hill, helped me bury the men and collect some of the equipment together in one place, though she went behind the hill for a ‘call of nature’ once, which I took to mean that she didn’t want me to see her losing her lunch. Considering the earlier gap, that's probably when she closed and opened the anomalies – and set up the sequence of events that left me here.

Maybe it also means that the only way from this universe back to my own is through that horrible bit of Permian landscape. I hope not. I never want to see that black volcanic dirt again.

She didn’t need to do any of that to go where she wished, with the technology she controlled, but she said she wanted me along. She wanted company, she said. I’m not sure how much I can trust that she actually wanted me, and dumped me here on a one-way trip because I rejected her, both the night before and by kissing Claudia Brown.

\-- no, I won’t think about Claudia right now.

But Helen also solicited Stephen – that’s the most accurate descriptive word I can use – and he refused her, too. Knowing Helen, that means she was sleeping with, using, my own Stephen Hart as well.

The Stephen who is here has a harder shell than the lad I took on as an assistant a decade ago. He's become my good right arm, but both he and this universe’s Britain have been through a lot, what with the assassinations. My Stephen was more willing to follow the lure of a pretty dark-haired girl, or my pretty dark-haired wife. Now that I think about it, I can see him quietly being attentive to her, a bit more than one might expect of a lab assistant, before she left, back when he was younger and more impressionable. She was always fond of taking her pleasures as she found them, and, to be honest, time was that I wasn’t averse to it myself – that’s how we met. But that was long before her pleasures came at such a great cost to other people.

If Helen Cutter only arrived here two years ago, did she know somehow about the three-cornered relationship that Helen Farquhar had with Stephen and the other me? Someone must have told her, and she decided to take advantage of it. For all I know, the Stephen here told her himself; it’s possible, since this Stephen is far less reserved than the one I left behind. Or maybe she put the clues together and decided to take advantage of the situation. I can't imagine her ignoring any advantage she could take.

It's so hard, now, to think back to my own time and place; this world is creating layers over it in my mind like old-fashioned transparencies over a map. Maybe I am only imagining the encounters between my Stephen and Helen; maybe she invented it all, based on what she learned here and her brief encounter with this world's Stephen. I’m sorry for how deeply he was hurt by her, and for the anger I flamed at him because of her. I knew what a heartless bitch she was; I should have known better than to treat him so, when he was just someone else she'd used. 

It's a very good thing that she undervalued Abby and Connor, or I would worry about what she might do to them, too.

I wish I’d met Helen Farquhar, the woman of this universe who inspired such devotion and caring in everyone she knew. She must have been wonderful.


	2. Another country, and then another

Connor seems to have a new girlfriend; he doesn’t talk about her except to complain when he has to break their dates. From Abby’s poorly hidden disgust, I suspect that she does not think the girlfriend is up to her standards, but is far too polite to say so.

I have been living at “my house”, which is an odd thought in itself because it feels as if I am subletting someone else’s place. The piano is a Behning, not a Baldwin, and all the bookcases contain books I don’t recognize. Not that that’s a bad thing; on the evenings when I have some time to myself, I have been reading them and noticing the differences from what I know.

_the past is another country, and besides, the wench is dead_

But the most startling difference – if a superlative can be employed in a situation where everything is different – came up while Stephen was driving us to work. I haven’t been driving because the license for this universe is in the other Nick’s pocket, wherever he is, and because every time I mean to go and get it replaced something comes up.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Stephen said as we waited for a light to change, “where did you get that jacket? It looks military.”

“It is. I kept it when I got out of the Army and went to University.”

“You were in the Army?”

“Aye. I was a terrible shot then, too.”

He shook his head slightly, as if clearing his mind. “You’ve been wearing it nearly every day.”

“It feels strange to wear someone else’s clothes.” I had tried. They were the correct size, and in styles and colors I liked, but they weren’t mine. The styles were all subtly different.

“I’m sorry. We can go on a shopping trip whenever you like.”

“You think I’ll need the help to figure out the fashions?”

“I think you’ll need the help to find the stores.”

“You have me there.”

But he still looked incredulous. “You were in the Army,” he murmured.

“Why is that so surprising? I did my few years and then the Army paid for my studies. Doesn’t that happen here?”’

“Not really. The army was pretty small until recently; people only went into it because they wanted that life as a career, but not that many people want to do civil defense or disaster rescue. And then there was the Buckingham attack, and it got a bit bigger, but there wasn’t a massive campaign to enlist people.”

“When was the last time this country sent troops overseas?” I asked, curious.

“I think it was the Pre-Weimar Conflict, 1916-1918 or so.”

“Not 1914? What happened, did the guy who was shooting at Archduke Ferdinand miss?”

“Archduke Ferdinand?”

“Franz Ferdinand, heir to the throne in Austria. He was assassinated in 1914 by a Serbian, which made the Austro-Hungarian Empire declare war on Serbia and its allies, and that started World War I.”

“You’ve had more than one World War? What, one wasn’t enough?” We were nearly at the ARC. “We really need to bring you up to speed on recent history,” he said as we pulled in the driveway, and were waved on by the guard. “Just – don’t say anything about this to Lester, all right? Helen made a few offhand comments about world wars and living conditions that had him very upset.”

“Bombing and rationing?”

He nodded. “So she wasn’t raving mad, then. Your universe had these things.”

“Well, she was right about that bit. Come back to the house tonight for dinner and we can talk more.”

He nodded and gave me a smile that said it didn’t matter if I was crazy, and we went on in to the insanity that was our usual workday.

As a way to learn more about the ARC’s research overall, I was spending one day a week doing a walk-through of the building, talking with people in all departments, finding out what they were up to and what they needed. Sometimes it was more greasing the wheels than anything else, but I steered clear of administration whenever possible and instead put my mind to learning as much as I could about the current projects. Sometimes I started with Gunnery Sergeant Simmons in the basement, who would give me an overview of all new weaponry and a chance to try it out if feasible. Once he realized that I wasn’t gun-shy but simply had poor ability to focus on a target at distance – something my Army drill sergeant had also complained about – he made sure that I got to play with all the weapons that featured some amount of automatic targeting. 

Today, still bemused by the differences in history, I started at the top of the building with Botany, where the botanists were still in raptures because some seeds for the scrubby Jurassic plants had been caught in the tread on Stephen’s destroyed boot, and they had managed to get them to sprout.

“I thought that boot had just been thrown away,” I commented, after saying suitably good things about their ability to sprout something that had been drooled on by an angry raptor.

“Oh no,” the chief botanist assured me, “any devices or equipment that comes back through an anomaly is checked for spores, seeds, leaves – anything that might tell us more about the past.”

“I suppose you’d like to check the people as well?”

The botanist looked startled. “Not at all. That would be such an invasion of privacy, unless they’ve been made ill, in which case we’ll do all we can to help. Mind you, some of the staff would love to interview anyone who comes back, but narrative about unknown species isn’t terribly useful without pictures. But if you happen to have a jacket or hat or other outerwear that gets into contact with the greenery or mud or whatever, we’d be delighted to look it over and even get it cleaned for you.”

“I’ve got the jacket downstairs that I wore in the Permian; would you like to check it out? It hasn’t been in a vacuum; I’ve been wearing it around here a lot because it’s very comfortable.”

“We’d be delighted.” 

“It’s in my locker downstairs; I’ll bring it by before the end of the day.”

“We’ll be looking forward to it.”

Connor was in a meeting with the staff physicist, an electrical engineer and several others whose faces I’d seen in the building, and the conversation looked fairly intense so I kept going. 

Abby looked up from the table in the research library; she was the only one there other than the librarian. She had a stack of journal articles open around her, and was working at a computer. “Cutter! I was hoping you’d be doing your walkabout today.”

“What are you working on?” I picked up a copy of _Journal of Paleobiology_ that was open to an article on theriopods.

“I was down on the target range this morning, and Sergeant Simmons asked me if there were some sort of field guide to the different eras where his men might be sent, so he could outfit them properly for whatever they might meet. And there isn’t, you know.”

“We don’t have a Royal Society of Ancient Adventurers, writing up their memoirs?” I asked.

“Nothing so useful. I thought maybe I could come up with a simplified guide for them – what kinds of creatures they might find in which era, what the climate might be like, things like that.” She waved her hand at the journals. “But I’m a zoologist, not a paleobiologist; this is fairly thick reading. I don’t suppose you might have time to help me out?”

“It’s a brilliant idea,” I told her. “Of course I’ll help. This could save lives.”

“That’s what I was thinking,” she said quietly. “I was remembering your face when you came back and said that Captain Ryan and his men were dead. They had the best of ordinary equipment when they went back there, but maybe they need something less usual at times. Bigger. Different.” She shrugged, helplessly. “I don’t want to upset the past but I’d like our people to come back in one piece.”

“Yes.” I remembered the feeling of the gritty volcanic dirt on my hands, the blackness of it, the horror of burying people I had known even for a short while in a place their families would never see. “I’m not busy at all. Let’s see if I can’t make this easier for you.”

We gathered up the journals and went into the small meeting room next door, where she asked me questions and typed up the answers until lunchtime, when we sat across the table from each other in the kitchenette and ate whatever sandwiches the ARC's caterers had left for us that day.

After lunch, I took my jacket up to Botany, where the head botanist treated it like a holy relic. “We’ll get this back to you as soon as possible,” he said. 

“I’m not concerned,” I told them. “It’s fairly old.”

And on the way back down to my own area I stopped to see Lester. “It’s come to my attention that I need to get some documentation sorted.”

“Oh? What sort of thing?” A single vertical line appeared between his eyebrows.

“Driver’s license, the usual. I must have dropped my wallet in the Permian. I’ve been coming in with Stephen.”

“Ah. Well, I think that can be taken care of easily enough.” He pressed a button. “Leek.”

Leek’s narrow face appeared around the corner of the glass partition. “Yes, sir?”

“Cutter went and dropped his wallet somewhere in the past. Would you see to it that he has new copies of all relevant personal documentation – driver’s license, health card, library card, credit cards, all that sort of thing?”

“Yes, sir. That should be no problem.”

“Good. I’d like it here tomorrow morning.”

Leek gulped. “I’ll get right on it, sir.” And he vanished from view.

“Also, I’ll need some time this afternoon for personal business; since I don’t have a license, Stephen can drive me.”

An eyebrow rose. “We don’t have you punch a clock, and usually I have to kick you out of the building. Why on earth are you asking me for permission?”

“I’m not. I’m just letting you know in case of emergency.”

“That’s what mobiles are for. Is there anything else?”

“You might like to know that Abby’s working on a pocket guidebook to the past, a sort of summary of what animals and plants and climate might be expected in which eras. “

“Sounds as if it might be useful. For your team?”

“For anyone who might go through an anomaly, and anyone who works at the ARC. The more we all know, the more likely it will be that whoever goes through an anomaly will come back in one piece.”

“Tell her that if she needs any resources not already here, I’ll arrange for her to get them from the British Museum or anywhere else that has them.” He raised both eyebrows. “Why are you still here?”

“I’m not.” I left, smiling. I was glad that the acerbic Sir James Lester had a soft spot for Abby and Connor, much as he tried to hide it. He respected their expertise and seldom exposed them to as sharp an edge of sarcasm as the tone that he sharpened regularly on myself and sometimes on Stephen.

Stephen was harder to track down; after missing him in the bone room, the specimen laboratory and the small office he used for computer work, I caught up with him lifting weights in the gym. “Get your jacket; we’re going shopping,” I told him.

He put the 10-kg weights that he’d been using for arm curls back into their holders. “Where’s your jacket?”

“Botany wanted to extract spores from it.” 

“Best possible use it could be put to,” he said, pretending to duck away from my glare. “I’ve got a spare in the car that you can wear till we get to the shops.”

A few hours later I had two new jackets, two pairs of trousers and two of jeans, a new pair of boots, and half a dozen shirts or jumpers of various sorts. “It’s a good haul. What are you going to do with the clothes that are still there?”

“Put them into storage. There’s a cedar closet in the basement.”

“Better use the wardrobe in the attic; I can help you move up a chest of drawers as well, if you want. The basement leaks in the springtime.” His expression went remote, as if he’d closed the shutters.

“Good to know,” I said, in as mild a tone as I could.

He closed the boot. “Want some coffee? There’s a decent cybercafé around the corner.”

The cybercafé looked to be more café than cyber; it had a lot more people at tables with their own laptops than sitting at the terminals in the back. But the drinks list was long and the snacks I saw on the tables looked appetizing. I scanned the offerings, and then my eyes drifted past the bulletin board behind the counter to see a photo of Helen sitting at one of the terminals.

I poked Stephen without looking, got him in the ribs by accident and he yelped. “Sorry,” I said. “Look over there.”

He stared at the photo. “I don’t remember seeing her wear that outfit.”

“I do – back where I’m from.” 

The barrista noticed our interest. “You know her?”

I nodded. “Yeah, pretty well. It’s a good photo. Does she come in often?”

“Not so much now. I used to see her here a lot four or five years ago, then a bit last year.   
We did a photomontage of random shots that Mr. Fielding, the owner, took over the years. He’s got an exhibition down at the Landing Gallery, if you’re interested.” He waved his hand in a generally westward direction.

“I think that might be well worth seeing,” Stephen said. He still looked startled.

The barrista looked from one of us to the other. “If you see her, tell her Carlo says hello. If that won’t cause any trouble, that is.”

“No trouble at all. I’ll give her your best,” I said. “And I’d like an espresso doppio, for here.” Stephen ordered the house coffee blend.

We found a table over by the side that didn’t have computer plugs, which made it more private.

“Well, that answers a few questions, doesn’t it?” I said, as I savored the excellent espresso.

“She had to be researching us, before she showed up. Several years before, from the date on that photo.”

“I think we can assume now that very little Helen did was by accident. But the question that sticks with me is why she would do it.” I frowned. “If she was here four or five years ago, that’s before she even showed back up where I lived.”

“It’s not that long after Helen Farquhar disappeared from here, and when the ARC was built. You realize, construction on this building was begun within three months of the Buckingham, and we moved in only four months later.” He leaned forward, hands cradling his coffee over the table. “We were there almost before the concrete had finished curing.” He traced a pattern on the bare tabletop with his finger. “Abby and I found the cache here, just off the ley line from the Long Stone. The nearest frequently active anomalies are here and here.” He tapped to show their location. “It might be worthwhile to go through those nearest anomalies and see if she might have left caches near them, too.”

“Oh, aye, I’m all in favor of spiking Helen’s guns, but how will we do it without Lester trying to stop us?”

“Let me think about that. He talks to me, sometimes.” His mouth twisted. “The problem’s going to be doing it without an entire squadron of SFs trampling the scenery as well.”

My smile went sour in response. “Even I could read that kind of trail.”

When we'd finished our drinks we turned as one toward the direction the barrista had pointed at when he talked about the exhibit. If there were any more photos that had dates on them, maybe we could get copies for the ARC. Or at least get Lester to cruise past on his way home. Something, anyway.

The Landing Gallery was in an old warehouse down by the river; it had been spruced up since the days when it stored bales of wool or barrels of whiskey or whatever else had gone downstream on barges and boats to market in Bristol and beyond. The photography exhibit was on the second floor, up an old industrial stair made of beams that had to have been cut and set into place before Britain lost its American colonies, and that were polished to a warm glow by footsteps over the centuries.

I was so busy appreciating the artistry of the stairs, the open brickwork walls, the rough old industrial building’s beauty turned to use again that I ran into Stephen at the top of the stairs. He stood as still as a tree, staring at one of the three large photos on the wall ahead of him. It was a view of the coffeehouse from above, perhaps from a ladder, and it clearly showed Helen, her backpack by her knee, slouching in a comfortable chair in the back of the room, reaching for her drink and typing on a computer.

The picture was dated six and a half years earlier.

“She took a real chance, coming here then.” Stephen’s voice was rough. “Look at the date. The ARC had just been built, Connor and I were stopping here nearly every morning for carry-out, and yet there she sits as if she owns the place.”

Footsteps came toward us across the polished wood floor. “You like the picture?” The speaker was a tall thin man, about my age, in a casual jumper and jeans, but his clothes had the same sense of style as Stephen’s. 

“Very much,” I said. “You’re Mr. Fielding?”

The man smiled. “Henry Fielding. It’s all my work.”

“Wonderful,” Stephen murmured, and Fielding looked pleased.

“Actually, you may be able to help us,” I put in. “Someone we’ve been looking for is in a photo you took that’s back at the coffeeshop on Huntlie Street and here as well.” I pointed at the clear view of Helen in the back of the room. “Do you have any more photos with her in them?”

“What’s this about?” he asked. “Or should I ask?”

“It’s my ex-wife,” I told him, not quite lying in a good cause. “She took off with some things of mine that I want back, and this is the first time I’ve seen photos of her in years. Maybe something in a photo will help me find her.”

The man considered. “I’ve got a few more, over here. Frankly, I’m not surprised to hear this; she always seemed a bit dodgy to me.”

“How so?” Stephen asked, with interest, not disagreeing with the opinion.

“You know I own the café, right? Well, she comes gliding in one afternoon, years back, looking like she’s been living rough, really rough, for far too long. Oh, clean enough but if you look you could see where the soap hadn’t worked, or else she’d been sleeping in the sun too much. Now, I don’t like to refuse to serve anyone who behaves themselves and can pay -- gives the place a bad name -- so I sell her a drink and a sandwich, and an hour on the ‘net, and she sets up in the back of the room. She was pretty jumpy – noticed every time a door opened or someone moved – and made me think she might be trouble –“

“You didn’t think she was in trouble, instead of being trouble?” Stephen asked.

The man shook his head. “Not her, not with that knife handle poking out of her pack. Had to be near half a meter long, but there’s nothing in the law saying she can’t carry it, so I couldn’t say anything. Anyway, I was replacing lights up over the bar, so I take up my quietest camera and snap a few shots. It wasn’t that long after the Buckingham, and we were all still a bit jumpy about strangers.”

“Very understandable,” I said. “What about the other photos?”

“Next time she was in, I took a few more of her with a long lens as she was leaving. She’s polite enough, pays up promptly, but every time she just looks … a bit off, if you know what I mean.“ He frowned. “She’s not dangerous, is she? I mean, I’m not going to be in fear for my life from having her picture in the exhibit, or at the café?”

“Might want to take down the one in the cafe, if you’re uncertain, but I think you’d be fine. Helen was never interested in art at all,” Stephen said. 

“The others are over here.” He led us to a freestanding wall in another part of the room. It showed a sequence of street scenes, with Helen in each of them: looking into a store window, checking her pack, shoplifting a pair of socks from a shop’s sidewalk bin, and walking away. 

“That one was actually a bit of a relief.” Fielding pointed to the shoplifting. “I was still a bit on edge after the Buckingham – we all were – and having a strange woman in the café who looked a bit dangerous… well, I wanted to be …”

“Cautious?” I asked.

Fielding nodded sharply. “Mind you, I look a bit dodgy myself at times, when I’ve spent fourteen hours in the darkroom; I like the look you get with archival print processes, and that’s the only way I can get it. I wasn’t going to turn her in on her looks, but I wanted to see if she was a terrorist.”

“And someone who’s been living rough and is short on money might steal socks but someone bent on mayhem isn’t likely to risk being nabbed for something that petty,” I said. “Very wise of you. I think you’re right about her living rough. She decided she wanted to go on a long walking tour several years ago, and she never came back – well, except to sneak into the house and nick stuff that she probably sold.” It made sense to tell the man something like that, and it was true enough. There were times when I was certain she’d been in the house, in the lab, in the office – when a book had been moved the slightest amount, or my comb had been turned the wrong way around on the counter. 

And that didn’t even take into account her dropping the live ammonite on my desk. Finding that had been simultaneously one of the most exciting things in my life, and one of the creepiest.

Fielding gave me a sympathetic glance. “That’s cold. You look like an all-right bloke, too. You weren’t giving her the back of your hand, I suppose?”

“Never once, though we had some hard words when she left her job to go on walkabouts.”

He nodded. “I can give you the name of a copper in town who’s good at tracing stolen goods, if you want. Doesn’t matter if they’re valuable or just sentimental, he’ll do it.”

“Thanks. That’d be good.” Not that I’d ever use the name, since anything she’d taken was probably in a different universe. 

Stephen’s expression told me he thought I was going too far with the details. “Would it be possible for us to get copies of all of these prints, so that we can look at them more carefully? And a list of times and places when they were taken?”

“If you’re not concerned about perfection, I have some prints that were scratched or otherwise damaged back at the studio. You can have those for free, if you like; I can’t sell them.”

“As long as she’s clear in them, and you can tell us when and where you took them, the rest doesn’t matter. When could we pick them up?” I asked.

“Tomorrow, here?” 

I nodded. “What time do you open? One of us can stop by on break, unless someone calls a meeting.”

“Eleven, but I’m here by ten every day. Ring the bell downstairs.”

“Thank you very much,” I said, shaking Henry Fielding’s hand. “I really appreciate it.”

“Ex-wives are hell, aren’t they,” he said, with a knowing grin. “Always got to watch your back.”

“Oh, you have no idea.”

* * *

The rest of the day went well enough. I worked with Abby, listened to a physicist talk about his view of anomalies and why they sparkle, and did what I could to avoid running into Jenny Lewis. There was no way around it; she was the image of Claudia, and even though my conscious mind knew the difference my unconscious did not. Even though I never wanted to return to the Permian Era, there were times I wished I could send my lizard brain there for a while, to get it to shut up.

In the evening Stephen and I went to a pub, and then back to the house, where he continued to try to help me sort out this topsy-turvy world.

“All right,” I said. I’d listened all the time we were in the pub, but too much of what he'd described didn’t make sense to me. “How about if I mention well-known historical events from where I came from and you tell me if they happened here?”

“Fire away.” Stephen lounged on the couch, beer in hand.

“Norman Conquest, Battle of Hastings in 1066, which put William the Conqueror on the throne.”

“Check. He’s the one who set aside the forests as hunting preserves, including the Forest of Dean.”

“Right, except that in my time the stand of trees in the Forest of Dean was much smaller; a lot of it had been cut down for charcoal or turned into agricultural land. There were even small housing developments and villages in the area where you have trees here.”

“That must have caused problems when the anomalies opened.”

“Lots of problems – the gorgonopsid broke into a house and a school, for one thing. And keeping things quiet was harder than you can imagine.”

“I’ve got a pretty good imagination,” he said, but he looked thoughtful. “What else?”

“Henry VIII, six wives, Edward, Mary, then Elizabeth I and the Spanish Armada?”

“Same.”

“Religious wars and disputes, Puritans, Roundheads, Catholics, Nonconformists.”

“Probably the same. It all sounds like something I heard in grammar school. Pick something more recent.”

“Okay, names of rulers. Georges one through four, then Victoria for 60 years or so, then Edward and more Georges, then Elizabeth, with one abdication back in the 1930s.”

“Sounds right. Not sure about the abdication. Who was it?”

“Edward VIII, succeeded by his younger brother George VI.”

Stephen shook his head. “That didn’t happen here. Edward VIII reigned until, oh, 1947. He never married and died in a car crash. George succeeded him but died of cancer in the 1950s, and that put Elizabeth on the throne.”

“That’s interesting – it’s as if history self-corrected around Edward. Was he any good?”

Stephen shrugged. “Dunno. I’m no historian, but he was considered a decent diplomat; he oversaw treaty negotiations with Weimar and Austro-Hungaria, and that kept us out of the Pacifica Conflict in the 1940s.”

“Let me guess: Japan invaded Manchuria, then attacked Hawaii, which brought in the United States against them.”

“And Russia. The Romanovs weren’t at all pleased with Japan.”

“The Romanovs are still around?”

“Why wouldn’t they be?” 

I shook my head. “Does the word ‘communism’ mean anything to you?”

“Not really.”

“How about ‘European Economic Community’?”

“No. You said something about rationing?”

“Food was in very short supply in many parts of the country from the late Thirties to the start of the Fifties, later in some places. There was rationing. For example, each person was allowed one egg a week during the War.”

“That sounds like science fiction,” Stephen said. “Let me tell you what happened here. There was some sort of argument between Edward, Victoria’s son, and his cousin Nicholas of Russia, but it was settled during the Pre-Weimar Conflict, after which Germany became part of the Weimar Republic; it still is, more or less. I don’t think Britain has sent troops abroad for anything large since then. 

He had been shifting his shoulders restlessly; now he got up and walked to the window and back, staring out at the road.

“What is it?”

“I think your Helen may be back. Either that or I’ve got an invisible flatmate I’ve never been introduced to. There was longer hair in the shower drain, and one of the towels had been used and hung over the shower door, where I never put them.”

“She has a key?”

“Helen Farquhar always had one; she took it with her into the Permian. And I stupidly gave this Helen one when she returned.”

“You weren’t to know it was the wrong woman.”

“No. And even if I ask for it back, there’s no guarantee it will be the only one she’s got. She could get in here any time she liked; this has never been a ‘secure’ house.”

“I know. She’s wary of me but not nearly wary enough.”

“You’ve a harder edge than the Cutter I knew.”

“Consider which Helen I was dealing with.”

He nodded, tight-lipped.

“Stephen, let it go. If she comes back again, don’t trust her. What else can I say?”

“The hell of it is, sometimes she makes sense.”

“Aye, sometimes she does. Even a broken clock is right twice a day.”

* * *

After Stephen left I went through the house, checking the locks again. Checking all the windows and doors, noting the positions of books on the shelves, the places where someone coming in could be tracked. My predecessor had had a cleaning service come in weekly; I would ask them to make it once a month and do my own picking-up, if only to allow a little dust to collect. Helen might move silently but everything leaves tracks in dust.

Of course she could figure out the schedule and show up the day after the service, but no matter how tightly she calculated timing there might be ways to throw her off, make her show herself.

Lester still wanted to get his hands on her and question her about what had happened the day I arrived, though he wouldn’t talk to me about it. He probably thought I sympathized with her. He seemed to regard me as an erratic eccentric, and I suppose he thought there was some evidence in his favor. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to help him in that or simply stay out of his way. 

In this universe, Helen Cutter was technically still my -- his -- wife. From the things Stephen had and hadn’t said, my counterpart would never have had his Helen declared dead; he wouldn’t have wanted to lose any chance that she might return to him. In my universe, I had gone through the legalities in the fourth year after she disappeared, in order to move on with my life. I needed to become the man whose wife had died, tragically and finally, not the man who was still pathetically waiting for her to return from the grave.

I wasn’t made of stone; there had been other women, but none who meant enough, and their care of me was likewise casual though mutually tender. I had been circumspect enough that I believed no one knew other than, perhaps, the Stephen of that time and place. And now that Helen had made her past with him known, I suspect that my Stephen may not have known at all. He had been casual enough with his many loves, seemingly needing only a lovely face or form and dark hair and eyes to awaken him, though he did care deeply about the Helen we had known, the one who had died emotionally by going through anomalies, just as permanently as the Helen of this world had probably died physically.

It was late. I didn’t have the mind or the energy to take up the chronology now, or to read journal articles. I went to sleep in the bed of another man with my name, to stare at the ceiling of his room that was crossed with scattered light from the streetlamp outside, filtering through the parted curtains.

* * *

Leek did have my documents the next day, for which I thanked him. He appeared grateful for the recognition, though he shrugged it off. I gathered from what he did not say that he was having a hard time of it working for Lester. 

“They also serve,” I told him.

“I think Sir James would not appreciate anyone simply standing and waiting, unfortunately.” Leek gave me a small smile. “You’re very welcome, professor.”

“Leek!” came from the upper office. The man scuttled off in that direction. It was certainly not his fault that he bore such a strong resemblance to a bandicoot, or some sort of primitive rodent. He had to have some redeeming features, and I was willing for the moment to count his quick work in getting me official documentation as one of them. I had little enough to do with him; he was an unknown quantity, a fossil half-obscured by rock, unclassified.

* * *

Stephen showed me the photos that Henry Fielding had taken. There were more in the shoplifting series, as well as a variety of shots that had to have been taken over time, as she wore far more upscale and posh clothing in some of them.

“I know that outfit,” Stephen said, pointing at one photo where she wore dark trousers and a jacket with an open-collared shirt. “She wore it here, probably last year.”

I flipped my mobile open. “Lester. Got something to show you, in my office.”

Lester walked in a moment later. “Close the door,” I told him.

“This had better be good; you’re taking me away from the budget projections.”

“Oh, it’s good.” I flipped open the folder of photos and spread them out across the table. “See anyone you know?”

He drew a sharp breath. “Where and when were they taken?”

“At a cybercafé about two miles from here, and they’re dated from nearly seven years ago to last year.”

“So. She was here before she showed up in the Forest of Dean.”

“Evidently, and more than once. It seems she might have been doing research on all of us.”

“I should ask why, but I suspect the answer is that multiple-universe theory of Stephen’s.”

“It’s not just a hypothesis any more, Lester. It’s pretty much proven.” I pointed at the two photos that most clearly showed Helen’s face. The older photo had her in her walkabout gear, with the backpack; the newer one showed her in the suit. They were unmistakably the same person. “She’s found a way to travel through time and across universes at will. Now, why would someone do research on the internet –“

“Internet?”

I waved a hand impatiently. “Globenet, internet, worldnet, whatever you call it here. Why do research if you already know the place? What I think is that she was there to check on us – all of us – to see if we existed in this universe and where we were. And to find out if there was a way to fit herself in here.”

Lester’s eyes narrowed. “I hate being researched. If you want to know something about me, ask me straight out so I can just tell you no comment.” He cocked his head. “So, who am I in your world, er, universe?”

“Pretty much the same person, except you oversee the response to anomalies from the Home Office and there is no ARC. And your assistant is Claudia Brown.”

“Ah. And what about the rest of the usual suspects?”

I shrugged. “The team’s the same there, but Abby’s still working at the zoo for a living and hanging out with us part time, Connor’s still a university student and Stephen is my lab technician.”

“Interesting.” Lester took a few steps and made a quick turn, pacing in a room not large enough to allow that much movement. “What do you want to do with the photos?”

“That’s up to you. I thought our SFs should have them, for security, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea to circulate them elsewhere in the ARC if that can be done discreetly.”

“You suspect something.”

I nodded a little. “I keep feeling the eyes on the back of my neck. And the last few times, when we got notified about the anomalies, it was too late for us to send anything back through them. Almost as if someone was messing with the system.”

“So you think someone’s been getting in for a while?”

“Or someone is already here.”

He drew a sharp breath.

Stephen, who had been quiet this whole time, said, “Have there been any employees who were suggested to you by some other branch of government, for example? Or through a different recruiter?”

“None of whom I’m aware, but I can certainly check on it.”

I closed the folder, slid it into an envelope and handed it to him. “Just … be careful with them.”

Lester nodded. “I’d like it if you could put together a briefing on this multiple-universe situation, and its implications for the ARC. We’ll do it as an oral briefing, no notes taken, at some noisy pub somewhere.”

“Agreed,” Stephen said, and I nodded. 

. . .


	3. Like a circle in a spiral

I kept reviewing my notes of the anomalies that I remembered from my own universe that didn’t happen here in the same way, and thinking about Helen’s behavior. She had to be traveling out of sequence to normal time. There wasn’t another explanation.

First known recent anomaly in my home universe: gorganopsid and Rex. Helen drops a live sea creature on my desk that should have been extinct, flirts with me from under a streetlamp, and disappears.

Second anomaly: giant spiders and centipede. Helen appears to Stephen, gives him a message for me. She’s waiting for me on the other side of the anomaly. She doesn’t touch him or help him although he’s received a poisoned bite and may be dying.

Did she ever really care for either of us? I push that thought away and keep going.

Third anomaly: mosasaur, flightless bird creatures. Helen sends back the handkerchief, I go through the underwater anomaly to talk to her, try to get her to return and she in turn tries to get me to throw away everything I’ve done and stay with her. I come back, run into the mosasaur on the way, and am rescued from drowning only by Stephen and Claudia. Meanwhile, Lester, or Lester-and-Claudia, order the Special Forces to bring Helen back; they go through the anomaly, find her and drag her back unwillingly, and she thinks I was in on it.

Fourth anomaly: Helen claims that sabretooth cats are going to come through an anomaly; the team and SFs go to check it out. The anomaly is in a commercial kitchen under a stadium, which has carts filled with meat pies ready for the next footie game; she uses the excuse of getting rid of meat pies as her way to distract the SFs and runs into the anomaly. Stephen and Ryan follow; they find the spaghetti junction field, filled with anomalies sparkling and winking in and out. There’s no way at this point to know if the ones opening and closing are going to the same place each time or other places and times; we haven’t the technology. Helen, however, must have mapped this field because she’s already gone. After Stephen and Ryan return, they’re followed by dodos that are infected with parasites that kill the dodos, then infect and kill Connor’s friend. There is no direct evidence to connect Helen with the dodos or the parasites; however, it wouldn't be unlike her to grab some available creature and toss it through behind herself as a distraction. 

Fifth anomaly: pteranodon and _Rhamphorynchus_. Helen intercedes to keep Claudia alive, protecting her in the hotel and helping her escape while Helen blows up the kitchen, destroying the flock of _Rhamphorynchi_. 

Why at this point would she intercede at all? Why try to help Claudia, who works for Lester, who was at least complicit in arresting her and bringing her in, unless – in Helen's own timeline – this occurred before our experience with the mosasaur, when she was still friendly to me and wanted me to come with her?

It makes no sense otherwise. 

I suspect that Helen had a hand in opening the anomaly to let the pteranodon through – it’s large, it’s noticeable, and it’s fairly innocuous, if that can be said of a twenty-foot flying reptile. But then the _Rhamphorynchus_ came through as well, and she decided to come here to mop them up. Perhaps she had experience with them in the past; perhaps she was able to see what they’d done here already. So she came here to get rid of them, and in the process managed to rescue Claudia. If that was so, she wasn’t there for Claudia specifically, but rescuing Claudia would not be a bad thing, and might give her more brownie points with me, later on. So she blew up the hotel kitchen, wiping out the mob of flying reptiles, ultimately saving both Claudia and me.

But if this happened earlier than when she was captured by the SFs, there’s no way she would have knowingly sent infected dodos back toward us. Either she found the dodos wandering around, tossed the lead dodo through the anomaly and the others followed (are dodos hierarchical?), or they wandered in by themselves. Regardless, I think she never knew about the parasites at all. Using dodos as a distraction would be a very Helen thing to do. 

Sixth anomaly: the future creatures, which Helen “accidentally” led to our time from the Permian. I have to wonder whether she led them into the Permian Era also, but there’s no way to tell, and from her demeanor I suspect that she may have been telling the truth about being unable to evade them. I think this happened after the other encounters. Helen was wary of Lester, and possibly of me also at first, and approached Stephen as a go-between. I suspect, now, that she tried to restart their liaison at that point as well. I have no idea whether she got anywhere with him or not, because I ended up here instead of there. 

For all I know, if she can go to any time she wants as long as there’s an anomaly in the middle, she might be commuting back and forth among a variety of lovers, a whole long list of Stephens and Cutters and who knows who else. I’d exempt Connor because he’s a bit young for her tastes, and Abby as well because both Abbys have always been wary of the Helen of my universe. On the other hand, Helen has always been a scientist first and a sybarite second, though she never hesitated to combine the two. She lives in her body but her mind rules; she has one of the strongest wills I’ve ever met. 

Hmm. If multiple worlds exist (which I know to be true), and if sufficient and necessary conditions provide that the same people show up in at least two of them (which I also know to be true), then logic would say that it’s possible that the same people – or sufficiently similar people – would show up in many more of them. In this world, there is no Claudia Brown, but there is a Jenny Lewis; perhaps a generation or two in the past someone married someone else with a different last name but the same genes still were passed on. The multiverse would seem to be at least partly self-correcting, given a similar enough gene pool and sufficient opportunity for passing genes along.

Given this, all of this, it didn’t make sense for Helen only to be active in these two universes. If multiple time periods within one universe weren’t enough to keep her busy, and two separated universes with their own time periods weren’t enough either,   
then it was likely that if she knew of other universes she would be going there, doing things, conducting more than one visible life among separate groups of people.

How could she make sure she wouldn’t run into another version of herself? Well, we had part of the answer – Stephen and I had found it. If there were any sort of internet there, she’d find a way to search it. Perhaps if the world weren’t technologically advanced enough she would simply move on; less technological societies tended to be more closely knit at the local level, so that the presence of a woman in clothing that might not fit into the local styles would be more noticeable.

Just thinking about this was giving me a headache. I should buy a bottle of pain pills and label it with her name.

Connor had said that the Cutter he knew was trying to devise a grand unified theory of anomalies. Maybe, if I picked at the irregularities in what we knew of Helen’s travels, I could find one, too.

* * *

The three of us met at the Bird in Bush, a pub I’d never frequented that catered to rugger fans. There was certainly enough noise from the bar to cause problems for anyone trying to record us. Stephen said the food wasn’t bad, either.

Lester, in jeans and an old, comfortably worn-in jumper, looked like his daytime self’s younger brother. I saw Stephen’s eyebrows lift as he watched Lester make his way through the crowd to the bar, but he moved over to make room for him in the booth the two of us had taken over. It was at the side of the room, far enough away to make the noise a dull roar, and with a clear view of the windows and the front and back entrances.

The barman dropped off three pints for us, and promised the burgers would be out soon. Lester wrapped his hands around his Guinness and said, “What, no whiskey?”

“Back when the world was controlled by religion, Martin Luther said, ‘There’s no theology without beer.’” I took a sip from my own dark ale. “Since it’s world-changing we’re going to discuss, I thought it was appropriate.”

“Good enough. Are you planning to change my view of the universe before or after the food arrives?”

“Oh, after. Or along with. It’s hard work, universe-changing.” I couldn’t keep a tinge of bitterness out of my voice. “I should know.”

At that point the burgers did arrive, with a platter of chips to share. “Great timing,” Stephen said. He snagged a napkin and a handful of chips. “Let’s begin with the idea that every single chip here could be a universe, and any point on a chip is a point in time in that universe. An anomaly here,” he pointed the tip of his knife at a spot on a chip, “could let someone who is here go to another place on that chip, and most of the time that’s what it does. That’s time travel within the same universe.”

“And that’s what we deal with at the ARC most of the time,” Lester said. He nodded, his eyes intent. “Go on.”

“Except sometimes.” Stephen pulled out two chips that had gotten stuck together while being fried. “Sometimes an anomaly can link two universes. For now, I’m going to assume that the anomaly chooses the nearest possible universe to link to, even though I don’t know how that works or what that means.”

Lester glanced up at me. “So when you came back from the Permian …”

“I wasn’t crazy. I’d been in a different universe that morning, where other people were alive, where the ARC didn’t exist yet.” I pulled out the big fact I’d kept back. “Where Queen Elizabeth II is still on the throne of Great Britain, but has no independent power to act because of historical events that go back hundreds of years.”

“Good God. Still charging along in her mid-eighties, I suspect?”

“Very much so, though what she actually does I’ve no idea.”

“And I suppose those world wars that Helen mentioned were real, along with rationing and so on.”

“London was bombed for months by Germany in the second one; it took a while to rebuild that. And yes, rationing of petrol and food and a lot more.”

He shook his head. “You know that I trust both of you, but it’s a lot to swallow.”

“Chew it a bit first,” I told him.

Lester threw a chip in my general direction. At my expression, he said, “What? I’m off duty.” He turned back to Stephen. “I think we were derailed into practicalities there. Please go on with the theory.”

“Remember, we don’t have a way to control anomalies, though I’m sure that Connor could create one, given time and equipment. If you assume that Helen does, though, it makes this a lot easier.” Stephen gave me the look that said ‘over to you.’

“I’ve been working on a chronology of Helen and the anomalies,” I said, taking out my notebook. “Take a look.” I pushed the open notebook in front of Lester, who read it first with a frown on his face, (I assume at my handwriting) and then with his mouth set hard. 

“On the evidence you’ve got, the Helen Cutter from your world played us and got away with it.”

“Yes,” I said. “There’s no other conclusion.”

“And –“ he paused, “considering that she seems to have the ability to move through time as well as universes on demand, that Helen Cutter may have opened the anomaly that resulted in the disappearance of the Helen from this universe.”

My throat felt as if it had turned to stone. “Yes.”

Lester pushed the rest of his burger aside on its plate and stared into the distance for a moment, and we gave him space. It wasn’t as if the idea were new to either of us, but it hadn’t been said aloud before.

“I’m sorry, Cutter,” he said at last. “More sorry than I can say. And I believe I owe you a huge apology for my treatment when you first arrived here. I thought you were simply being eccentric when you were actually in great distress, and that was an injustice. I hope you will forgive me.”

His level gaze at me was as honest as I could hope to find. “Aye, of course I forgive you. This is a lot to take in, and we were all hit with it far too fast.”

“As it was,” Lester said, picking up the last few bits of his burger, “I’d been informed just before you arrived of a number of things that gave me cause to think that the Helen Cutter we’d been working with for more than a year was an imposter and not the Helen who had been here before she disappeared. It was reliable information from a good source, and I should have taken into account the logical inference – if there were more than one Helen, then there could be more than one Nick.”

“And more than one Stephen, and Lester, and everyone else,” I said.

“And that’s why the first place Helen went when she got to this universe five years ago was to a cybercafé where she could do research on all of the names she knew from the other universe, see where we were, and how she might or might not fit in.” Lester shook his head. “Well, dedicated scientists are generally excellent at research.”

Stephen choked on a chip, and I slapped him on the back. He gulped his beer and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand before he continued. “We can make some assumptions from what we know. Since we have proof that there are two universes that touch through an anomaly somewhere nearby, there are possibly other universes that might touch ours at some point. There might be any number of other Helens, Nicks, yous, mes and so on, in those other universes, who may or may not know about anomalies. I suspect that the further from our two known universes that we go, the less likely it would be that people will know about anomalies. The further from known universes we go, and the less likely it would be for the people in our team to work together or even know one another.”

“So we’re the chosen ones who get to track dinosaurs through anomalies.” Lester sprinkled malt vinegar over the chips on one end of the platter and took a few for himself. “Grandmother always said she knew I’d be someone special one day.”

“Funny thing. My gram said just the same about me.”

“Mine didn’t say a thing,” Stephen said. “But my mum thinks I’m pretty cool.”  
He snagged the paired-universe chips and ate them.

“So you think there are more universes that are accessible through anomalies, but we don’t know where those anomalies are and we can’t control the anomalies we do know about. Right so far?” Lester said.

“That’s it.”

“But so far we have the advantage because we know that there are other universes, even if we can’t control access or get there – because there are a limited number of controllers?”

Stephen nodded. “We have to assume a limited number of controllers, because we haven’t seen the actual mechanism, only its probable effects, and the effects are limited.”

“So." Lester cocked an eyebrow. "If the team should happen upon any sort of alternate technology while it’s chasing dinosaurs, do be sure to aim it at an anomaly from the proper side and see what happens.”

“Couldn’t hurt – long as it’s from the proper side.”

Lester looked wistful. “I rather wish we did have access, you know. I could really use a vacation. If I could control when I left and returned, as well as where I was going, I could take a break any time I needed one and nobody would be the wiser.”

“Except that when you got back with a month’s suntan, someone might notice that you hadn’t had it before lunch.” 

“And if I bought the odd piece of clothing…” Lester’s eyes met Stephen’s.

Stephen nodded. “That explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

“What?” I asked.

“After Helen returned, she had new clothing from shops that don’t exist,” Stephen said. “Abby and I tried to track down some of them, but nobody’d ever heard of them.”

“Huh. Now, that I wouldn’t have thought to notice.”

“I notice you’re wearing much trendier garb than when you arrived.” Lester took a swig of his beer. “Did Stephen take you shopping?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Apparently you don’t wear recycled military uniforms here.”

“I thought that looked odd.” My words sank in and Lester’s eyes widened. “You were military? You? You barely tolerate the SFs who guard the team.”

“In my universe, if you go into the service for a few years the government pays for your university education afterward,” I explained. “I kept a couple of the jackets because they fit well; I just took off the insignia.”

“And he still can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a rifle,” Stephen commented, snagging the last chip.

“Aye, but I do a little better with a semi-automatic anything.”

Lester leaned back in the booth, slumping a little. It was amazing how much he loosened up when he was out of those elegant, perfectly groomed suits. “So, let me sum up where I think we are.” Apparently his mind was still in Italian tailoring. “We live in one of a variety of universes that are connected to similar universes by anomalies. These are not just anomalies traveling through time forward and back but across universes. We know that it’s possible to travel from one universe to another because you’ve done it, professor." He gave me a nod. "We also know that it’s possible to travel from a past era in another universe to this current one here. We do not currently have the ability to control travel through anomalies, though you suspect the technology exists, and it’s reasonable to believe that is what Helen Cutter wanted to find when she went back through the anomaly and left you here, burning her bridges rather spectacularly.”

“That’s about right,” I said.

“That’s what we know. This is what I gather we surmise,” Lester mused, drawing with the edge of his fork tine on the table. “By now Helen has been to the future, and has acquired technology that lets her control the timing of anomalies – when and how long they are open – as well as what they connect to. We can assume this from the fact that the anomaly you stepped back through, thinking you were going home, came here, and that she led you through it. This leads me to believe that Helen Cutter can move through the anomalies in any direction she wants as long as she can get her technology to do what she wishes. However, we cannot assume this is the only technology she has.” He straightened again and leveled his gaze at Stephen and me together. “How sane is she?”

Stephen hesitated and glanced at me.

“She’s not sane at all,” I said. 

Lester’s mouth twisted. “Can you be a little more specific? I’m not asking for a complete psychological workup, but you do know her better than anyone else, Cutter. You have a better sense of where she’s changed, and what she’s capable of.”

"Sociopathic." I drew a deep breath and let it out. “Something must have happened to her, somewhere along the line while she was traveling through anomalies for all those years. I don’t know what it was. She has no real concern or compassion for anyone but herself now. She will use anyone she meets in order to reach her ends.”

“Is she physically dangerous?”

“Yes.” Stephen and I spoke in unison. I went on, “In my universe, you had SFs go through an anomaly and drag her back to this world. It took half a dozen of them to do it. She’s fast, an extremely efficient fighter and survivor. She’s also brilliant; she managed to get away from the same squad of SFs by making them think a sabertooth was about to come through an anomaly and then running straight into it. She got away, that goes without saying, but that’s how we discovered what the Connor where I'm from called the spaghetti junction – a field that contains anywhere from two to three dozen anomalies all open at the same time. Anything that comes through can go anywhere.”

“Really. Did anything come back through into your universe?”

“Dodos.” Despite the toll the hapless birds had taken on all of us, I couldn’t help smiling at the memory for a moment, then losing the smile in remembrance of what happened afterward. “Dodos with parasites that attacked humans. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Do you think she sent them through?”

“Probably. I don’t think she knew they had parasites. But the first one came barreling through the anomaly as if it had been tossed, and the rest followed. And then we had a fine time chasing them around. But to get back to your question, yes. She survived in any number of primeval eras for years with just a knife, intelligence and not much else. She may be the single most dangerous person you’ll ever meet.”

Lester looked straight at me. “With respect, Cutter, I think you are. Helen shows up, and five good men die, but you show up and entire worldviews collapse and have to be rebuilt, and that may change an untold number of lives.”

“He’s got you there, Nick.” Stephen said, waving at the waiter for the check.

“One last question.” Lester’s voice had softened. “Do you think we’ll ever see our own Helen again? I mean, the one from this universe?”

I didn’t want to dissuade him, or destroy his or Stephen’s hope. “Anything is possible. For all we know, the Nick from your universe has found her, out there somewhere, and they’re on their way back through the anomalies.”

“I’d like to think so. I had lunch with her a few times while I was up at Oxford; her great-aunt and my grandmother were close friends. Brilliant woman.”

Stephen nodded, his lips pressed together. 

At that point someone’s team scored a goal on the telly, and the noise from the bar covered anything else.

* * *

I found another clue to the differences between universes in a random comment that Lester made a few days later, which nobody seemed to take oddly at all. 

It was an ordinary staff meeting, one of the brief monthly ones in which all of us were updated on the status of everyone’s current projects and ideas for the future. Connor talked about the gizmos he was making and what he wanted to work on next, Abby presented the current draft of her handbook and asked for suggestions of further things to include, Stephen discussed the work he was doing to correlate location of anomaly with time period, length of time the anomaly was open, and the amount of creature activity associated with it. 

When it came to my turn, I didn’t want to talk about the chronology, so I said something about working with Abby on her handbook, consulting with various departments on request and pulling together a comparison of known fossils with the information from the living-but-otherwise-extinct creatures we’d encountered.

“Good, good,” Lester said, as if he understood a shred of what had been said. “Her Majesty will be very pleased. “

Connor grinned. Abby nodded, a smile on her lips. Stephen sat back in his chair, tapping his pen on the pad in front of him where he’d been idly sketching out a flow chart as the others talked. 

Afterward, I followed Connor to the exercise room, and stepped up on the treadmill. “Her Majesty?” I asked.

“Yeah, what about her?” he said, as he added weights to the long bar on the weight bench and locked them into place.

“The Queen is that interested in the ARC?”

“Oh, yeah.” He nodded, and tilted his head as if the question didn’t make sense. “When she was just some random royal, she liked to ride out here; she has friends in the area. Besides, she funds this place.”

I nodded slowly. “That’s what Stephen said. It sounds so strange to me.”

Connor raised an eyebrow in my general direction. “Apparently, it was her idea, after the Buckingham. You’d have to ask Stephen or Lester for details, though. I wasn’t on board until after the planning stages; still at the University.” He got into position on the weight bench and started lifting. “She came to visit here a couple years ago; we all were introduced but she said she’d met Helen before.”

“Oh, that must have been fun.”

“Why?”

“The Helen I know is a complete anti-monarchist. She was really interested in Welsh and Scottish independence movements.”

“Huh.” He took this in and shrugged it off. “Well, she was polite enough, pleaded memory loss from a concussion when Zara said they’d met before, and Zara was nice about it.”

“Good excuse.”

Connor put the bar back into its rest and sat up, rubbing one bicep. “Are things that different … where you were?”

“Where I’m from, “ I said, with a glance around to make sure we were alone, “the royals have no political power. They’re figureheads, doing official ceremonial stuff. They have immense personal wealth and estates, but they have no say in what happens in the government, or in programs and projects like this.” I thought a moment. “The Prince of Wales has a number of special ecological projects on his own estates, but they’re private, not government.”

“Huh. That's different. Who does the decision-making?”

“Parliament does it all, has done for a few centuries.”

“Well, they do most of it here, but the constitution reserves certain powers for the ruling monarch, and one of them is a sort of special projects clause. I think it might require the ‘advise and consent’ of the PM or something, but I don’t think anyone can stop the Queen if she really wants to do something with her own money.” Connor looked apologetic. “I really don’t know that much; I was lousy at history and government stuff when I was in school.”

I patted his shoulder. “Thanks for the explanation. It’s always good to have someone to tell me when things are different. Keeps me from looking stupid in front of Lester.”

“Oh, yeah, tell me about it.” Connor shrugged. “He’s not so bad, most of the time. Just have to make sure he gets the good coffee all the time, no matter what, and he’ll listen to you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Any particular kind?”

“Kona, Jamaican Blue Mountain, some blends. Definitely not the stuff from the local stop-and-shop.”

* * *

As I reviewed the list of anomalies that the team had pulled together for me, the division between the two types of anomalies -- those that might be considered natural or random, and those that had interference from Helen – became clearer. Here, the natural ones might well include the one with the Irish elk, the aurochs, the entelodonts (the mere thought of which made me cringe), the eohippoi or hyracotheria, and similar later-era-related occurrences. The ones in which Helen seemed to be actively involved, for the most part, appeared to focus on time periods that were much earlier, as in the Permian, and much later, as in the time of the future predators. Perhaps it was because these times were connected to one another in ways other periods weren’t; perhaps it was because they were ones in which she had a special interest. I was of two minds about the quetzalcoatlus. On the one hand, its arrival was extremely similar to that of the pteranodon, where Helen had been so involved in keeping us alive; on the other, it was possible that this second instance of a flying reptile on a golf course was simply accidental. There had been no sign of Helen, and no additional creatures showing up anywhere. 

As we were driving to work the next day I asked Stephen, “Helen Farquhar?”

“Hmm?” he said, concentrating on traffic.

“What was her major area of paleobiological interest? Did she focus her work on any particular periods?”

His eyebrows rose a little as he thought about it. “She taught classes in evolutionary biogeography, island biogeography, evolutionary fitness, things like that. She was primarily interested in how various species may have relocated themselves to cope with ice ages, when they had the time and chance to do that instead of getting hit with sudden catastrophic events.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, you were working on finding the places where reptiles evolved into mammals, based on anatomy and molecular phylogenetic research. The three of us wrote one paper together that was published; we had another one in the works when Helen disappeared.” Stephen glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “I suppose I could find the notes in the house if you let me search for them.”

“Search anywhere you want.”

“What is it?” Stephen said, while they were waiting to make a turn. “You’re fussing.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, yes, you are."

“I keep thinking that I’m missing something big, something really obvious about this other you as well, and I just …” I mimed grasping for something insubstantial. “It’s there. I just can’t quite touch it yet.”

“You will.” Stephen’s confidence was serene. “You always do.”

“Don’t predict based on past statistical experience; it’s poor practice.”

“Why did Helen Cutter want you to go with her? What did she say, back in the past?”

“First, she said she was lonely, which was probably true, but loneliness or the lack of it has never been a guiding principle with her. She’s too self-sufficient that way. Then she wanted me to come with her to explore the future anomaly.”

“Hmm. Do you think she was looking for a specific kind of expertise?”

“I don’t know. If she’d wanted someone who’s a survivalist –“

“She would have pushed harder for me.” The car made the last turn toward the ARC. “Wouldn’t have gotten her anywhere.”

“I’ve never asked you why you didn’t go.”

Stephen parked the car and shut off the engine. His eyes blazed in the shadows. “You want the truth? I loved the real Helen, the one who was generous and kind and inquisitive. I never saw that Helen be cruel.” He pocketed the key, still staring straight ahead but I knew he wasn’t seeing the ARC’s concrete. “I’d rather spend the rest of my life with the memories of the Helen I knew than have them desecrated by someone who only looks like her.”

He got out and walked toward the guardpost. I followed him; I had to run a bit to catch his stride.

“Stephen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –“

“It’s all right.” He stopped, inside the hallway, and when he turned toward me he looked calmer. “I shouldn’t have gotten so heated. It’s just – I used to talk about her with Nick…”

“And you don’t feel comfortable talking with the fake.”

He turned in front of me so fast that I had to stop to keep from running into him, and grabbed my shoulders hard. “Don’t say that. There’s nothing fake about you at all. You’ve been down a couple of different roads, but it hasn’t changed the essential you. We all know that, even if we don’t say it. You’re Nick Cutter.”

“Even when I’m feeling like Thomas the Rhymer or Tam Lin?”

“Even then.” He gave me a crooked grin, patted me on the shoulder and let go. “I’ll drag you off a horse any time she’s around, but don’t expect to knock me up.”

“Only to wake me in the morning, nothing more.” And so we started the day.

* * *

Stephen’s question was a good one. Why had she come after me? What could I give her that she couldn’t do for herself, or find elsewhere?

Maybe she did want to show me the worlds she’d found, give me a tour of the bits of prehistory where she’d lived. I knew that was part of it, but I didn’t think it was the whole thing. She had something else in mind. She had been teasing me, early on, tempting me to follow her into the uncharted lands like a phouka trying to tease a rider into the river. But Helen had never teased like that when it was just about sex; she was about as straightforward as anyone could be in her sex life. The little confrontation in the doorway the last night I spent at my house was pure vintage Helen Cutter, with her waiting for me in my old soft white shirt. But she was waiting, not putting her arms around me; she was giving me a choice in how I would respond, and I didn’t do what she wanted – though, seeing her in that shirt, it took all my willpower to close the door and I stared at the ceiling for an hour afterward.

Helen had never had to resort to coyness to get what she wanted. Even if there had been nothing else different, that would have made me wary. 

It still did.

If she didn’t want me there for companionship, or to show me all the wonders she’d discovered – what then? She had been a dedicated scientist, once upon a time – and as those words came to mind I realized that the ethical scientist I’d known was as long gone as Gram’s fairytales. 

According to all the mystery novels, the traditional motives for desperate action include sex, wealth and power. Helen had tried to use sex as bait, but that was for leverage; she wasn’t after sex for its own sake. She didn’t seem to need money, and I couldn’t imagine, at first, how she was making ends meet, moving from one version of Britain to another. Then I thought of the Fielding photo. It would be so simple for her to lift a few precious things from one universe and sell them in another one. I’d never heard of a society that didn’t have people willing to pay good currency for some small rare item – and how much rarer could anything be than for it to have come from a different universe? Not that she’d be stupid enough to tell anyone the provenance. She was brilliant; there was no reason she couldn’t find a way to forge whatever paperwork she’d need, if necessary, but that kind of thing took too much precision. She’d be more likely to find someone who was already in that business to help her. 

Regardless of all of this, though, she wasn’t doing whatever she was doing in order to acquire conventional wealth, only to make ends meet and keep going. It might be possible to drag a fancy house or car from universe to universe, theoretically, but nobody in their right mind would drive a Ferrari or any other expensive bit of machinery into the Permian or the Pleistocene and back.

So, if it wasn’t sex and it wasn’t money, it was power – but what kind? Helen wasn’t politically inclined; her interests have always been scientific. She liked to tinker with ideas. 

No, she’d wanted to get to the future, to get her hands on information or technology or both. She’d known ahead of time that there was something there she’d want; I could see it in her face in the Permian, in her excitement about finding the future anomaly.

What could she do in the future that she couldn’t do now?

What _couldn’t_ she do in the future that she could do now? Or, what could she do now to influence the future’s possibilities?

I was getting a headache.

* * *

Someone had been messing with my desk again.

One of the skills a paleobiologist learns to cultivate is an ability to notice the placement of objects. It’s useful in the field for figuring out where the next fossil bone will be, if the creature died in some odd position. It’s useful in finding one’s way around a city without a map. And it’s something I’ve always been able to do. Even back in the old paleobiology office in the University, which was crowded with fossils, papers, journals, projects, tools, and whatever else someone found that couldn’t be sent into storage yet, I knew when someone had touched my desk. That was one of the reasons that finding the live ammonite on the desk back at the University had made the hair rise on the back of my neck.

Here at the ARC, someone – probably Lester – must have had a word with the cleaning crew early on: _make sure the floors are spotless but don’t touch the desks or the lab tables or anything that has anything on it at all._

Accidents happen, of course. But it’s one thing to find a stack of papers skewed at the edge of a desk because someone walked by too quickly and quite another to find that the book one has been reading or the pad on which one has been writing, well away from the edge, has been turned at a 30-degree angle.

Could it be Helen? Why come back, when she’d effectively divorced herself from me and from everything in this universe? What could she be after? And if not Helen, who could it be, and why?

. . .


	4. The way we weren't

I kept reviewing my notes of the anomalies that I remembered from my own universe that didn’t happen here in the same way, and thinking about Helen’s behavior. She had to be traveling out of sequence to normal time. There wasn’t another explanation.

First known recent anomaly in my home universe: gorganopsid and Rex. Helen drops a live sea creature on my desk that should have been extinct, flirts with me from under a streetlamp, and disappears.

Second anomaly: giant spiders and centipede. Helen appears to Stephen, gives him a message for me. She’s waiting for me on the other side of the anomaly. She doesn’t touch him or help him although he’s received a poisoned bite and may be dying.

Did she ever really care for either of us? I push that thought away and keep going.

Third anomaly: mosasaur, flightless bird creatures. Helen sends back the handkerchief, I go through the underwater anomaly to talk to her, try to get her to return and she in turn tries to get me to throw away everything I’ve done and stay with her. I come back, run into the mosasaur on the way, and am rescued from drowning only by Stephen and Claudia. Meanwhile, Lester, or Lester-and-Claudia, order the Special Forces to bring Helen back; they go through the anomaly, find her and drag her back unwillingly, and she thinks I was in on it.

Fourth anomaly: Helen claims that sabretooth cats are going to come through an anomaly; the team and SFs go to check it out. The anomaly is in a commercial kitchen under a stadium, which has carts filled with meat pies ready for the next footie game; she uses the excuse of getting rid of meat pies as her way to distract the SFs and runs into the anomaly. Stephen and Ryan follow; they find the spaghetti junction field, filled with anomalies sparkling and winking in and out. There’s no way at this point to know if the ones opening and closing are going to the same place each time or other places and times; we haven’t the technology. Helen, however, must have mapped this field because she’s already gone. After Stephen and Ryan return, they’re followed by dodos that are infected with parasites that kill the dodos, then infect and kill Connor’s friend. There is no direct evidence to connect Helen with the dodos or the parasites; however, it wouldn't be unlike her to grab some available creature and toss it through behind herself as a distraction. 

Fifth anomaly: pteranodon and _Rhamphorynchus_. Helen intercedes to keep Claudia alive, protecting her in the hotel and helping her escape while Helen blows up the kitchen, destroying the flock of _Rhamphorynchi_. 

Why at this point would she intercede at all? Why try to help Claudia, who works for Lester, who was at least complicit in arresting her and bringing her in, unless – in Helen's own timeline – this occurred before our experience with the mosasaur, when she was still friendly to me and wanted me to come with her?

It makes no sense otherwise. 

I suspect that Helen had a hand in opening the anomaly to let the pteranodon through – it’s large, it’s noticeable, and it’s fairly innocuous, if that can be said of a twenty-foot flying reptile. But then the _Rhamphorynchus_ came through as well, and she decided to come here to mop them up. Perhaps she had experience with them in the past; perhaps she was able to see what they’d done here already. So she came here to get rid of them, and in the process managed to rescue Claudia. If that was so, she wasn’t there for Claudia specifically, but rescuing Claudia would not be a bad thing, and might give her more brownie points with me, later on. So she blew up the hotel kitchen, wiping out the mob of flying reptiles, ultimately saving both Claudia and me.

But if this happened earlier than when she was captured by the SFs, there’s no way she would have knowingly sent infected dodos back toward us. Either she found the dodos wandering around, tossed the lead dodo through the anomaly and the others followed (are dodos hierarchical?), or they wandered in by themselves. Regardless, I think she never knew about the parasites at all. Using dodos as a distraction would be a very Helen thing to do. 

Sixth anomaly: the future creatures, which Helen “accidentally” led to our time from the Permian. I have to wonder whether she led them into the Permian Era also, but there’s no way to tell, and from her demeanor I suspect that she may have been telling the truth about being unable to evade them. I think this happened after the other encounters. Helen was wary of Lester, and possibly of me also at first, and approached Stephen as a go-between. I suspect, now, that she tried to restart their liaison at that point as well. I have no idea whether she got anywhere with him or not, because I ended up here instead of there. 

For all I know, if she can go to any time she wants as long as there’s an anomaly in the middle, she might be commuting back and forth among a variety of lovers, a whole long list of Stephens and Cutters and who knows who else. I’d exempt Connor because he’s a bit young for her tastes, and Abby as well because both Abbys have always been wary of the Helen of my universe. On the other hand, Helen has always been a scientist first and a sybarite second, though she never hesitated to combine the two. She lives in her body but her mind rules; she has one of the strongest wills I’ve ever met. 

Hmm. If multiple worlds exist (which I know to be true), and if sufficient and necessary conditions provide that the same people show up in at least two of them (which I also know to be true), then logic would say that it’s possible that the same people – or sufficiently similar people – would show up in many more of them. In this world, there is no Claudia Brown, but there is a Jenny Lewis; perhaps a generation or two in the past someone married someone else with a different last name but the same genes still were passed on. The multiverse would seem to be at least partly self-correcting, given a similar enough gene pool and sufficient opportunity for passing genes along.

Given this, all of this, it didn’t make sense for Helen only to be active in these two universes. If multiple time periods within one universe weren’t enough to keep her busy, and two separated universes with their own time periods weren’t enough either,   
then it was likely that if she knew of other universes she would be going there, doing things, conducting more than one visible life among separate groups of people.

How could she make sure she wouldn’t run into another version of herself? Well, we had part of the answer – Stephen and I had found it. If there were any sort of internet there, she’d find a way to search it. Perhaps if the world weren’t technologically advanced enough she would simply move on; less technological societies tended to be more closely knit at the local level, so that the presence of a woman in clothing that might not fit into the local styles would be more noticeable.

Just thinking about this was giving me a headache. I should buy a bottle of pain pills and label it with her name.

Connor had said that the Cutter he knew was trying to devise a grand unified theory of anomalies. Maybe, if I picked at the irregularities in what we knew of Helen’s travels, I could find one, too.

* * *

The three of us met at the Bird in Bush, a pub I’d never frequented that catered to rugger fans. There was certainly enough noise from the bar to cause problems for anyone trying to record us. Stephen said the food wasn’t bad, either.

Lester, in jeans and an old, comfortably worn-in jumper, looked like his daytime self’s younger brother. I saw Stephen’s eyebrows lift as he watched Lester make his way through the crowd to the bar, but he moved over to make room for him in the booth the two of us had taken over. It was at the side of the room, far enough away to make the noise a dull roar, and with a clear view of the windows and the front and back entrances.

The barman dropped off three pints for us, and promised the burgers would be out soon. Lester wrapped his hands around his Guinness and said, “What, no whiskey?”

“Back when the world was controlled by religion, Martin Luther said, ‘There’s no theology without beer.’” I took a sip from my own dark ale. “Since it’s world-changing we’re going to discuss, I thought it was appropriate.”

“Good enough. Are you planning to change my view of the universe before or after the food arrives?”

“Oh, after. Or along with. It’s hard work, universe-changing.” I couldn’t keep a tinge of bitterness out of my voice. “I should know.”

At that point the burgers did arrive, with a platter of chips to share. “Great timing,” Stephen said. He snagged a napkin and a handful of chips. “Let’s begin with the idea that every single chip here could be a universe, and any point on a chip is a point in time in that universe. An anomaly here,” he pointed the tip of his knife at a spot on a chip, “could let someone who is here go to another place on that chip, and most of the time that’s what it does. That’s time travel within the same universe.”

“And that’s what we deal with at the ARC most of the time,” Lester said. He nodded, his eyes intent. “Go on.”

“Except sometimes.” Stephen pulled out two chips that had gotten stuck together while being fried. “Sometimes an anomaly can link two universes. For now, I’m going to assume that the anomaly chooses the nearest possible universe to link to, even though I don’t know how that works or what that means.”

Lester glanced up at me. “So when you came back from the Permian …”

“I wasn’t crazy. I’d been in a different universe that morning, where other people were alive, where the ARC didn’t exist yet.” I pulled out the big fact I’d kept back. “Where Queen Elizabeth II is still on the throne of Great Britain, but has no independent power to act because of historical events that go back hundreds of years.”

“Good God. Still charging along in her mid-eighties, I suspect?”

“Very much so, though what she actually does I’ve no idea.”

“And I suppose those world wars that Helen mentioned were real, along with rationing and so on.”

“London was bombed for months by Germany in the second one; it took a while to rebuild that. And yes, rationing of petrol and food and a lot more.”

He shook his head. “You know that I trust both of you, but it’s a lot to swallow.”

“Chew it a bit first,” I told him.

Lester threw a chip in my general direction. At my expression, he said, “What? I’m off duty.” He turned back to Stephen. “I think we were derailed into practicalities there. Please go on with the theory.”

“Remember, we don’t have a way to control anomalies, though I’m sure that Connor could create one, given time and equipment. If you assume that Helen does, though, it makes this a lot easier.” Stephen gave me the look that said ‘over to you.’

“I’ve been working on a chronology of Helen and the anomalies,” I said, taking out my notebook. “Take a look.” I pushed the open notebook in front of Lester, who read it first with a frown on his face, (I assume at my handwriting) and then with his mouth set hard. 

“On the evidence you’ve got, the Helen Cutter from your world played us and got away with it.”

“Yes,” I said. “There’s no other conclusion.”

“And –“ he paused, “considering that she seems to have the ability to move through time as well as universes on demand, that Helen Cutter may have opened the anomaly that resulted in the disappearance of the Helen from this universe.”

My throat felt as if it had turned to stone. “Yes.”

Lester pushed the rest of his burger aside on its plate and stared into the distance for a moment, and we gave him space. It wasn’t as if the idea were new to either of us, but it hadn’t been said aloud before.

“I’m sorry, Cutter,” he said at last. “More sorry than I can say. And I believe I owe you a huge apology for my treatment when you first arrived here. I thought you were simply being eccentric when you were actually in great distress, and that was an injustice. I hope you will forgive me.”

His level gaze at me was as honest as I could hope to find. “Aye, of course I forgive you. This is a lot to take in, and we were all hit with it far too fast.”

“As it was,” Lester said, picking up the last few bits of his burger, “I’d been informed just before you arrived of a number of things that gave me cause to think that the Helen Cutter we’d been working with for more than a year was an imposter and not the Helen who had been here before she disappeared. It was reliable information from a good source, and I should have taken into account the logical inference – if there were more than one Helen, then there could be more than one Nick.”

“And more than one Stephen, and Lester, and everyone else,” I said.

“And that’s why the first place Helen went when she got to this universe five years ago was to a cybercafé where she could do research on all of the names she knew from the other universe, see where we were, and how she might or might not fit in.” Lester shook his head. “Well, dedicated scientists are generally excellent at research.”

Stephen choked on a chip, and I slapped him on the back. He gulped his beer and wiped his mouth on the back of his hand before he continued. “We can make some assumptions from what we know. Since we have proof that there are two universes that touch through an anomaly somewhere nearby, there are possibly other universes that might touch ours at some point. There might be any number of other Helens, Nicks, yous, mes and so on, in those other universes, who may or may not know about anomalies. I suspect that the further from our two known universes that we go, the less likely it would be that people will know about anomalies. The further from known universes we go, and the less likely it would be for the people in our team to work together or even know one another.”

“So we’re the chosen ones who get to track dinosaurs through anomalies.” Lester sprinkled malt vinegar over the chips on one end of the platter and took a few for himself. “Grandmother always said she knew I’d be someone special one day.”

“Funny thing. My gram said just the same about me.”

“Mine didn’t say a thing,” Stephen said. “But my mum thinks I’m pretty cool.”  
He snagged the paired-universe chips and ate them.

“So you think there are more universes that are accessible through anomalies, but we don’t know where those anomalies are and we can’t control the anomalies we do know about. Right so far?” Lester said.

“That’s it.”

“But so far we have the advantage because we know that there are other universes, even if we can’t control access or get there – because there are a limited number of controllers?”

Stephen nodded. “We have to assume a limited number of controllers, because we haven’t seen the actual mechanism, only its probable effects, and the effects are limited.”

“So." Lester cocked an eyebrow. "If the team should happen upon any sort of alternate technology while it’s chasing dinosaurs, do be sure to aim it at an anomaly from the proper side and see what happens.”

“Couldn’t hurt – long as it’s from the proper side.”

Lester looked wistful. “I rather wish we did have access, you know. I could really use a vacation. If I could control when I left and returned, as well as where I was going, I could take a break any time I needed one and nobody would be the wiser.”

“Except that when you got back with a month’s suntan, someone might notice that you hadn’t had it before lunch.” 

“And if I bought the odd piece of clothing…” Lester’s eyes met Stephen’s.

Stephen nodded. “That explains a lot, doesn’t it?”

“What?” I asked.

“After Helen returned, she had new clothing from shops that don’t exist,” Stephen said. “Abby and I tried to track down some of them, but nobody’d ever heard of them.”

“Huh. Now, that I wouldn’t have thought to notice.”

“I notice you’re wearing much trendier garb than when you arrived.” Lester took a swig of his beer. “Did Stephen take you shopping?”

“As a matter of fact, yes. Apparently you don’t wear recycled military uniforms here.”

“I thought that looked odd.” My words sank in and Lester’s eyes widened. “You were military? You? You barely tolerate the SFs who guard the team.”

“In my universe, if you go into the service for a few years the government pays for your university education afterward,” I explained. “I kept a couple of the jackets because they fit well; I just took off the insignia.”

“And he still can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a rifle,” Stephen commented, snagging the last chip.

“Aye, but I do a little better with a semi-automatic anything.”

Lester leaned back in the booth, slumping a little. It was amazing how much he loosened up when he was out of those elegant, perfectly groomed suits. “So, let me sum up where I think we are.” Apparently his mind was still in Italian tailoring. “We live in one of a variety of universes that are connected to similar universes by anomalies. These are not just anomalies traveling through time forward and back but across universes. We know that it’s possible to travel from one universe to another because you’ve done it, professor." He gave me a nod. "We also know that it’s possible to travel from a past era in another universe to this current one here. We do not currently have the ability to control travel through anomalies, though you suspect the technology exists, and it’s reasonable to believe that is what Helen Cutter wanted to find when she went back through the anomaly and left you here, burning her bridges rather spectacularly.”

“That’s about right,” I said.

“That’s what we know. This is what I gather we surmise,” Lester mused, drawing with the edge of his fork tine on the table. “By now Helen has been to the future, and has acquired technology that lets her control the timing of anomalies – when and how long they are open – as well as what they connect to. We can assume this from the fact that the anomaly you stepped back through, thinking you were going home, came here, and that she led you through it. This leads me to believe that Helen Cutter can move through the anomalies in any direction she wants as long as she can get her technology to do what she wishes. However, we cannot assume this is the only technology she has.” He straightened again and leveled his gaze at Stephen and me together. “How sane is she?”

Stephen hesitated and glanced at me.

“She’s not sane at all,” I said. 

Lester’s mouth twisted. “Can you be a little more specific? I’m not asking for a complete psychological workup, but you do know her better than anyone else, Cutter. You have a better sense of where she’s changed, and what she’s capable of.”

"Sociopathic." I drew a deep breath and let it out. “Something must have happened to her, somewhere along the line while she was traveling through anomalies for all those years. I don’t know what it was. She has no real concern or compassion for anyone but herself now. She will use anyone she meets in order to reach her ends.”

“Is she physically dangerous?”

“Yes.” Stephen and I spoke in unison. I went on, “In my universe, you had SFs go through an anomaly and drag her back to this world. It took half a dozen of them to do it. She’s fast, an extremely efficient fighter and survivor. She’s also brilliant; she managed to get away from the same squad of SFs by making them think a sabertooth was about to come through an anomaly and then running straight into it. She got away, that goes without saying, but that’s how we discovered what the Connor where I'm from called the spaghetti junction – a field that contains anywhere from two to three dozen anomalies all open at the same time. Anything that comes through can go anywhere.”

“Really. Did anything come back through into your universe?”

“Dodos.” Despite the toll the hapless birds had taken on all of us, I couldn’t help smiling at the memory for a moment, then losing the smile in remembrance of what happened afterward. “Dodos with parasites that attacked humans. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Do you think she sent them through?”

“Probably. I don’t think she knew they had parasites. But the first one came barreling through the anomaly as if it had been tossed, and the rest followed. And then we had a fine time chasing them around. But to get back to your question, yes. She survived in any number of primeval eras for years with just a knife, intelligence and not much else. She may be the single most dangerous person you’ll ever meet.”

Lester looked straight at me. “With respect, Cutter, I think you are. Helen shows up, and five good men die, but you show up and entire worldviews collapse and have to be rebuilt, and that may change an untold number of lives.”

“He’s got you there, Nick.” Stephen said, waving at the waiter for the check.

“One last question.” Lester’s voice had softened. “Do you think we’ll ever see our own Helen again? I mean, the one from this universe?”

I didn’t want to dissuade him, or destroy his or Stephen’s hope. “Anything is possible. For all we know, the Nick from your universe has found her, out there somewhere, and they’re on their way back through the anomalies.”

“I’d like to think so. I had lunch with her a few times while I was up at Oxford; her great-aunt and my grandmother were close friends. Brilliant woman.”

Stephen nodded, his lips pressed together. 

At that point someone’s team scored a goal on the telly, and the noise from the bar covered anything else.

* * *

I found another clue to the differences between universes in a random comment that Lester made a few days later, which nobody seemed to take oddly at all. 

It was an ordinary staff meeting, one of the brief monthly ones in which all of us were updated on the status of everyone’s current projects and ideas for the future. Connor talked about the gizmos he was making and what he wanted to work on next, Abby presented the current draft of her handbook and asked for suggestions of further things to include, Stephen discussed the work he was doing to correlate location of anomaly with time period, length of time the anomaly was open, and the amount of creature activity associated with it. 

When it came to my turn, I didn’t want to talk about the chronology, so I said something about working with Abby on her handbook, consulting with various departments on request and pulling together a comparison of known fossils with the information from the living-but-otherwise-extinct creatures we’d encountered.

“Good, good,” Lester said, as if he understood a shred of what had been said. “Her Majesty will be very pleased. “

Connor grinned. Abby nodded, a smile on her lips. Stephen sat back in his chair, tapping his pen on the pad in front of him where he’d been idly sketching out a flow chart as the others talked. 

Afterward, I followed Connor to the exercise room, and stepped up on the treadmill. “Her Majesty?” I asked.

“Yeah, what about her?” he said, as he added weights to the long bar on the weight bench and locked them into place.

“The Queen is that interested in the ARC?”

“Oh, yeah.” He nodded, and tilted his head as if the question didn’t make sense. “When she was just some random royal, she liked to ride out here; she has friends in the area. Besides, she funds this place.”

I nodded slowly. “That’s what Stephen said. It sounds so strange to me.”

Connor raised an eyebrow in my general direction. “Apparently, it was her idea, after the Buckingham. You’d have to ask Stephen or Lester for details, though. I wasn’t on board until after the planning stages; still at the University.” He got into position on the weight bench and started lifting. “She came to visit here a couple years ago; we all were introduced but she said she’d met Helen before.”

“Oh, that must have been fun.”

“Why?”

“The Helen I know is a complete anti-monarchist. She was really interested in Welsh and Scottish independence movements.”

“Huh.” He took this in and shrugged it off. “Well, she was polite enough, pleaded memory loss from a concussion when Zara said they’d met before, and Zara was nice about it.”

“Good excuse.”

Connor put the bar back into its rest and sat up, rubbing one bicep. “Are things that different … where you were?”

“Where I’m from, “ I said, with a glance around to make sure we were alone, “the royals have no political power. They’re figureheads, doing official ceremonial stuff. They have immense personal wealth and estates, but they have no say in what happens in the government, or in programs and projects like this.” I thought a moment. “The Prince of Wales has a number of special ecological projects on his own estates, but they’re private, not government.”

“Huh. That's different. Who does the decision-making?”

“Parliament does it all, has done for a few centuries.”

“Well, they do most of it here, but the constitution reserves certain powers for the ruling monarch, and one of them is a sort of special projects clause. I think it might require the ‘advise and consent’ of the PM or something, but I don’t think anyone can stop the Queen if she really wants to do something with her own money.” Connor looked apologetic. “I really don’t know that much; I was lousy at history and government stuff when I was in school.”

I patted his shoulder. “Thanks for the explanation. It’s always good to have someone to tell me when things are different. Keeps me from looking stupid in front of Lester.”

“Oh, yeah, tell me about it.” Connor shrugged. “He’s not so bad, most of the time. Just have to make sure he gets the good coffee all the time, no matter what, and he’ll listen to you.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Any particular kind?”

“Kona, Jamaican Blue Mountain, some blends. Definitely not the stuff from the local stop-and-shop.”

* * *

As I reviewed the list of anomalies that the team had pulled together for me, the division between the two types of anomalies -- those that might be considered natural or random, and those that had interference from Helen – became clearer. Here, the natural ones might well include the one with the Irish elk, the aurochs, the entelodonts (the mere thought of which made me cringe), the eohippoi or hyracotheria, and similar later-era-related occurrences. The ones in which Helen seemed to be actively involved, for the most part, appeared to focus on time periods that were much earlier, as in the Permian, and much later, as in the time of the future predators. Perhaps it was because these times were connected to one another in ways other periods weren’t; perhaps it was because they were ones in which she had a special interest. I was of two minds about the quetzalcoatlus. On the one hand, its arrival was extremely similar to that of the pteranodon, where Helen had been so involved in keeping us alive; on the other, it was possible that this second instance of a flying reptile on a golf course was simply accidental. There had been no sign of Helen, and no additional creatures showing up anywhere. 

As we were driving to work the next day I asked Stephen, “Helen Farquhar?”

“Hmm?” he said, concentrating on traffic.

“What was her major area of paleobiological interest? Did she focus her work on any particular periods?”

His eyebrows rose a little as he thought about it. “She taught classes in evolutionary biogeography, island biogeography, evolutionary fitness, things like that. She was primarily interested in how various species may have relocated themselves to cope with ice ages, when they had the time and chance to do that instead of getting hit with sudden catastrophic events.”

“Anything else?”

“Well, you were working on finding the places where reptiles evolved into mammals, based on anatomy and molecular phylogenetic research. The three of us wrote one paper together that was published; we had another one in the works when Helen disappeared.” Stephen glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “I suppose I could find the notes in the house if you let me search for them.”

“Search anywhere you want.”

“What is it?” Stephen said, while they were waiting to make a turn. “You’re fussing.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Oh, yes, you are."

“I keep thinking that I’m missing something big, something really obvious about this other you as well, and I just …” I mimed grasping for something insubstantial. “It’s there. I just can’t quite touch it yet.”

“You will.” Stephen’s confidence was serene. “You always do.”

“Don’t predict based on past statistical experience; it’s poor practice.”

“Why did Helen Cutter want you to go with her? What did she say, back in the past?”

“First, she said she was lonely, which was probably true, but loneliness or the lack of it has never been a guiding principle with her. She’s too self-sufficient that way. Then she wanted me to come with her to explore the future anomaly.”

“Hmm. Do you think she was looking for a specific kind of expertise?”

“I don’t know. If she’d wanted someone who’s a survivalist –“

“She would have pushed harder for me.” The car made the last turn toward the ARC. “Wouldn’t have gotten her anywhere.”

“I’ve never asked you why you didn’t go.”

Stephen parked the car and shut off the engine. His eyes blazed in the shadows. “You want the truth? I loved the real Helen, the one who was generous and kind and inquisitive. I never saw that Helen be cruel.” He pocketed the key, still staring straight ahead but I knew he wasn’t seeing the ARC’s concrete. “I’d rather spend the rest of my life with the memories of the Helen I knew than have them desecrated by someone who only looks like her.”

He got out and walked toward the guardpost. I followed him; I had to run a bit to catch his stride.

“Stephen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean –“

“It’s all right.” He stopped, inside the hallway, and when he turned toward me he looked calmer. “I shouldn’t have gotten so heated. It’s just – I used to talk about her with Nick…”

“And you don’t feel comfortable talking with the fake.”

He turned in front of me so fast that I had to stop to keep from running into him, and grabbed my shoulders hard. “Don’t say that. There’s nothing fake about you at all. You’ve been down a couple of different roads, but it hasn’t changed the essential you. We all know that, even if we don’t say it. You’re Nick Cutter.”

“Even when I’m feeling like Thomas the Rhymer or Tam Lin?”

“Even then.” He gave me a crooked grin, patted me on the shoulder and let go. “I’ll drag you off a horse any time she’s around, but don’t expect to knock me up.”

“Only to wake me in the morning, nothing more.” And so we started the day.

* * *

Stephen’s question was a good one. Why had she come after me? What could I give her that she couldn’t do for herself, or find elsewhere?

Maybe she did want to show me the worlds she’d found, give me a tour of the bits of prehistory where she’d lived. I knew that was part of it, but I didn’t think it was the whole thing. She had something else in mind. She had been teasing me, early on, tempting me to follow her into the uncharted lands like a phouka trying to tease a rider into the river. But Helen had never teased like that when it was just about sex; she was about as straightforward as anyone could be in her sex life. The little confrontation in the doorway the last night I spent at my house was pure vintage Helen Cutter, with her waiting for me in my old soft white shirt. But she was waiting, not putting her arms around me; she was giving me a choice in how I would respond, and I didn’t do what she wanted – though, seeing her in that shirt, it took all my willpower to close the door and I stared at the ceiling for an hour afterward.

Helen had never had to resort to coyness to get what she wanted. Even if there had been nothing else different, that would have made me wary. 

It still did.

If she didn’t want me there for companionship, or to show me all the wonders she’d discovered – what then? She had been a dedicated scientist, once upon a time – and as those words came to mind I realized that the ethical scientist I’d known was as long gone as Gram’s fairytales. 

According to all the mystery novels, the traditional motives for desperate action include sex, wealth and power. Helen had tried to use sex as bait, but that was for leverage; she wasn’t after sex for its own sake. She didn’t seem to need money, and I couldn’t imagine, at first, how she was making ends meet, moving from one version of Britain to another. Then I thought of the Fielding photo. It would be so simple for her to lift a few precious things from one universe and sell them in another one. I’d never heard of a society that didn’t have people willing to pay good currency for some small rare item – and how much rarer could anything be than for it to have come from a different universe? Not that she’d be stupid enough to tell anyone the provenance. She was brilliant; there was no reason she couldn’t find a way to forge whatever paperwork she’d need, if necessary, but that kind of thing took too much precision. She’d be more likely to find someone who was already in that business to help her. 

Regardless of all of this, though, she wasn’t doing whatever she was doing in order to acquire conventional wealth, only to make ends meet and keep going. It might be possible to drag a fancy house or car from universe to universe, theoretically, but nobody in their right mind would drive a Ferrari or any other expensive bit of machinery into the Permian or the Pleistocene and back.

So, if it wasn’t sex and it wasn’t money, it was power – but what kind? Helen wasn’t politically inclined; her interests have always been scientific. She liked to tinker with ideas. 

No, she’d wanted to get to the future, to get her hands on information or technology or both. She’d known ahead of time that there was something there she’d want; I could see it in her face in the Permian, in her excitement about finding the future anomaly.

What could she do in the future that she couldn’t do now?

What _couldn’t_ she do in the future that she could do now? Or, what could she do now to influence the future’s possibilities?

I was getting a headache.

* * *

Someone had been messing with my desk again.

One of the skills a paleobiologist learns to cultivate is an ability to notice the placement of objects. It’s useful in the field for figuring out where the next fossil bone will be, if the creature died in some odd position. It’s useful in finding one’s way around a city without a map. And it’s something I’ve always been able to do. Even back in the old paleobiology office in the University, which was crowded with fossils, papers, journals, projects, tools, and whatever else someone found that couldn’t be sent into storage yet, I knew when someone had touched my desk. That was one of the reasons that finding the live ammonite on the desk back at the University had made the hair rise on the back of my neck.

Here at the ARC, someone – probably Lester – must have had a word with the cleaning crew early on: _make sure the floors are spotless but don’t touch the desks or the lab tables or anything that has anything on it at all._

Accidents happen, of course. But it’s one thing to find a stack of papers skewed at the edge of a desk because someone walked by too quickly and quite another to find that the book one has been reading or the pad on which one has been writing, well away from the edge, has been turned at a 30-degree angle.

Could it be Helen? Why come back, when she’d effectively divorced herself from me and from everything in this universe? What could she be after? And if not Helen, who could it be, and why?


	5. Hide and seek

Connor had unveiled his anomaly detector a while back, but it seemed not to be working as predicted. Seemed, because both Connor and Stephen went over it and nothing was wrong. I went over it with him as well, and it seemed to work perfectly. But Leek kept saying that he was getting phone calls about new anomalies, ones that weren’t showing up, although most of the time when we got to an anomaly site there was no evidence that there had been one at all.

And then there was the amusement park.

The dead men in the paintball game had definitely been attacked by a large animal, a big cat. The claw marks were distinctive, as was the pattern of the bites – but the strength of the jaws of the animal that made those bites was immense. When Abby pointed out that there were hundreds of big-cat sightings in Britain over a year, what with the number of wealthy idiots – my term, not hers – who thoughtlessly kept large wild animals as pets and then didn’t know what to do with them when they outgrew the clumsy cub stage, I felt both relieved and frightened. I didn’t want to think that Connor’s anomaly detector had failed, but I also didn’t want to have us face a sabertoothed cat twice the weight of the largest recorded African lion.

But we did. Stephen saw it first, at the train station, with Veronica.

I never quite trusted Veronica. Her arrivals always seemed too opportune, and she wasn't frightened enough of the idea of such a large animal ranging through the countryside. It was a horrible shock to find Veronica’s boyfriend’s body down in that hole in the ground, mauled to death, but overall not so much of a surprise.

But Stephen’s attraction to Veronica did make me start to wonder about his propensity for getting interested in deceptively dangerous women. He had been a bit emotionally distant, which worried me, though I put some of that down to his liking for Veronica – yet another pretty girl with dark hair and eyes – and some of it to the possibility that there was an enormous cat out there that wasn’t afraid of humans at all, even though humans were taller, – and he was the one upon whom we relied to guard us all.

I remembered walking with Stephen in the hills behind the house, in the other world. He had been talking about the trip to Wyoming that was in the plans, to work on a dig as guests of an American university. I had joked about him tracking mountain lions, but he assured me that it was no joke.

“It’s going to see you long before you see it,” he told me, “but you have one advantage. Big cats judge power by height. As long as you’re taller, it thinks you’re bigger. That’s one reason they like to climb trees and rocks – it makes them think they’re bigger when they are dealing with someone tall.”

“They’re not tiny kittens, you know. What if I have to go behind a bush or a rock for, um, necessary purposes?” I asked.

“Take a friend,” he said. “Runners get attacked when they lean over to tie their shoelaces. In some parts of India, people working in the fields wear masks on the backs of their heads so the tigers don’t know which way they’re facing and can’t figure out how to get behind them.”

I tried to imagine myself persuading the team to wear masks on the backs of their heads. Connor and Abby would do it, but just trying to visualize it on the SFs made me want to snicker. “Anything else?”

“Don’t run away unless you really can be faster. Find something for a weapon and fight back.”

In the end, with the sabertooth, the only weapon that made any real impression on the creature was the digger scoop that Abby drove, swinging the scoop toward the cat to keep him busy while I got out of the way. It was a good thing that the cat never connected the big metal scoop with the small blond woman at its controls. And the only other weapon that mattered, after the cat had killed Valerie, before it could take the one leap it would need to bring me down, was Stephen’s tranquilizer rifle.

* * *

“What’s going on with you, Stephen?” I asked. 

It wasn’t that he had been preoccupied – I wasn’t the only one in tears over Valerie’s death at the claws and teeth of the cat she’d raised from a starving cub. But he had been so adamant about wanting the whole thing to go public that it worried me. That kind of attitude that took nothing of the result of publicity into account could get people killed – we didn’t need a horde of ‘creaturespotters’ and media types interfering with the work. If we were only dealing with hideous giant worms, it would be one thing; it was quite another thing to face anomalies and have to deal with large dangerous creatures that some poor sod would think were symbolic or legendary or heraldic beasties instead of lost animals from a different era.

I followed him into the men’s room and shut the door behind us. “Talk to me, please.”

He wouldn’t look at me. “She’s back.”

My heart slammed in my chest. “Where? Have you seen her?”

He made a sarcastic face. “Not exactly. I came home the other day and the shower had been used; there were towels all over the place. She’d taken a nap in my bed, too. The pillow was damp from her hair. And she left me a little thank-you-for-the-hospitality message on my phone.”

“I did say I didn’t think she was done messing with us.” I did what I’d come in for, and zipped back up. “Please don’t let her get to you.”

“If she shows up and asks for help, what am I supposed to do?”

That was a hard one. Helen, asking for assistance, could be devastatingly effective, flattering and appealing. 

“Do what you think is right,” I said at last. “Humane assistance, food and shelter, if you think you must. It’s not as if she couldn’t go elsewhere. But please, please don’t be taken in by her. There are logical flaws in all of her arguments; use them against her. Make her justify herself.”

He nodded once. “You know, if she was doing this to my other self, the poor sod probably didn’t know what to do. It’s probably a good thing it was me there, when you arrived, instead of him.”

“You’re a good man, Stephen.”

He gave me a crooked smile. “Wish I wasn’t, sometimes. But I remember our Helen.”

And he went out.

* * *

Leek has about as much care for the creatures we deal with as I have for a mosquito I’d swat. He showed no sorrow at all when he told me about the death of the sabertooth cat, which he attributed to Abby mistaking the dosage of the tranquilizer. I told him he was wrong. He looked far too happy when he was telling me the body had already been cremated.

Doesn’t it take longer than that to cremate a body? Hours, in fact? That much time had not passed. Leek must be up to something, but he seems to be such a petty man. It’s probably some sort of one-up-man-ship over Lester.

And my desk has been messed with again. I don’t know if it’s someone inside or outside of the ARC. I need to get the team together for another lunch out, somewhere that neither Leek nor Helen could find us.

* * *

Lately the dark circles under Abby's eyes show even through her makeup, and she moves her shoulders stiffly, as if she hasn't slept or relaxed in days. When Connor's in the same room with her, they don't make small talk the way they used to, though they work together well enough when necessary. My guess, from far to the side of things, is that it’s Connor’s new girlfriend getting on Abby’s nerves. I could be wrong; maybe it’s something else. Not my business, but when it affects the team, I have to wonder if I should say something.

Not that I’m any good at saying things, either.

She’s not the only one who’s off track. Something is awry with Lester; he’s jumpy and irritated at the wrong times, if it’s possible to say that. Perhaps he needs a new assistant. If I had to work with Leek that closely, it could drive me to live in a shepherd’s croft in the Valley of Storms, where it rains nearly every day all year round -- anything to get away from having to deal with him. 

But it could be something else. Maybe Helen is getting at Lester, too. Maybe she’s the one who has been searching my desk every few days. I need to get Connor to go over my house and see if she’s put any bugs there – I’m not sure I’d recognize them. Though, if they’re from the future, I’m not sure he would, either. But he could find the electronic signal for them, at least, and some way of disabling them.

How could Helen get into the building, though? Could she be opening an anomaly when we’re not around, one that’s not showing up on Connor’s sensors? I can’t see how that would happen. 

She’s got to have someone on the inside and I’ll go bail that it’s not one of my team. But there are a hundred people working here, what with all the scientists upstairs and the Special Forces unit downstairs. In a practical sense, I would disallow the SFs, simply because I don’t think they’d fall for her manipulative ways. They’ve had training in resisting that sort of thinking. But the scientists all have homes and families and outside lives, and she could probably find something on any one of them if she wanted. I can’t assume she only did research on me when she showed up at that cybercafé.

Still … I’ve never seen anyone deal with Helen whose attitude toward me didn’t change, and I haven’t noticed any change among the scientists. Granted, I don’t know all of them as well as I know the team, and I don’t want to take anyone else’s word on their alliances or affiliations. But, for what it’s worth, I trust Lester not to hire anyone who has anything suspicious in his or her background, any of the kinds of things Helen would exploit routinely.

I hate having to think like this about Helen. Part of me still remembers the woman I married, the woman who loved nothing better than going dancing all night when she could get the chance, the scientist who kept asking questions, and they were always good questions. Somewhere under this, she’s still asking questions, but I don’t think she will ever publish any of this research she has said she’s doing. In which universe could she ever publish anything, now?

* * *

I caught up with Connor in the hallway and steered him into a meeting room. "Tell me the first three ways you can think of that Helen could get into this building."

Without a pause he said, "She could walk in the door if the security wasn't set to keep her out."

"Is it?" I felt stunned; with all that we'd done and discussed with Lester, had he let that simple bit of security slip?

"I can check." He went to the nearest computer station, signed in and typed quickly. "I'm remote accessing the security system that I wrote; I kept a back door for myself just in case."

"You don't trust Lester?"

He made a face. "Lester's fine. I don't trust Leek. There." He pointed at a line on the screen. "See? She's been authorized as of two weeks ago."

That was when Stephen had found the hair in his drain and the used towels. "Who did it?"

"Someone with high enough access, which should mean either Lester or Stephen or me. Stephen wouldn't, Lester doesn't know how, and I didn't."

"That doesn't leave a lot of other people."

He pointed at the screen. "See that?"

"What?"

"Authorization, from Lester's computer."

I shook my head. "He wouldn't."

"He didn't." Connor brought up a second window, the calendar program that showed major meetings. I rarely used it, but Lester logged his meetings, in and out of the building. "See? He was up at the Home Office that morning and stayed all day. I was supposed to meet with him about budgeting for technology, but he was gone and Leek was up in his office all day."

Leek and Helen? He wasn't her type; he might not even be her species. Who knows what she was up to when she was traveling. I turned my mind resolutely away from that. "Someone's been moving things on my desk."

"Not one of us. We'd ask first," he said. "Want me to remove her authorization?"

"Can you do it without anyone knowing it was you?"

"Who do you think I am?" Connor gave me a sideward grin. He highlighted the line and deleted it, then went to another part of the program. "Over here, in the coding, I can add a bit to keep her out of the system – there." His fingers rattled over the keys. "I've made it so that the computer won't recognize her name, no matter what, and because it's not recognized nobody can authorize her."

"Good. Good." I drew a breath. "Now, can you set up something wrong with the computers that will hide what you did, to cover our tracks?"

"Already did. System should come down in three, two, one –"

And the screen went dark, as did the lights.

From the rest of the building, the cries went up. "Coming, coming," he called. "What is it this time?" 

I gave him two minutes lead time before I left.

Connor had everything back to normal within a few minutes. I wasn't sure how he managed to blame a blip in the national power grid, but he did. Lester grunted and looked huffy about it, but didn't ask anything more. Leek glanced back and forth from one of them to the other, narrow-eyed.

* * *

It was the next day that Stephen didn't show up at all. I'd begun driving myself again, and went by his place to pick him up, but he waved at me from the window and called down something about being there later, so I didn't wait.

Abby reminded me, over coffee, of the meeting Lester had scheduled for ten. By the time we had all gathered in the downstairs lounge, Lester strode up and shook his head. “He’ll just have to catch up on the gossip later. I have some information for you 

Connor was poking at his Blackberry – it probably wasn’t the same brand here but it had that kind of all-encompassing technical ability – and muttering to himself, the image of the absent-minded professor, barring his usual grunge clothing. It didn’t stop him walking as quickly as Abby, or bumping into her when she stopped stone-still in the doorway to the conference room.

“That’s --” Abby had one hand on each side of the doorframe; she shook her head once sniffed. “There’s a very odd smell in here.”

“What kind of smell?” Connor asked.

She shook her head. “Chemical. Almost like a perfume, but not. It’s messing with my head.”

“What’s the hold-up?” Lester asked. He edged his way through the group of us. “Planning a change to the décor, Abby? You should speak to Leek about that.”

“There’s something wrong with the air in there.” She studied the room. “And the ventilation grate has been blocked off.” She pulled the door shut. “You need to get the chemists to test the air in there somehow. I don’t trust it.”

“Right.” Lester took out his mobile. “Captain. I want a team up here with masks to take samples of the air in Conference Room B. Something smells very bad up here. And tell everyone else to evacuate the building.”

I glanced at Abby. “Are you all right?”

“A little dizzy.” Her legs went wobbly under her and she slid down the wall. Connor shot me a worried look; I picked her up and headed toward the exit.

“Have the medic meet us outside!” Lester said. He ended that call and started another one on the move. “Chemistry? We have some bad air in Conference B; the squad will be bringing you samples. Figure out what’s in it and let me know, soonest. Yes, yes, after the building has been vented.”

“Should I get her some water?” Connor asked, his eyes frightened.

“No.” I put a hand on his arm. “Not from the building until it's been checked.” 

Abby lay limp in my arms, too dizzy to protest being carried around. That alone was a worrying thought. 

“I want the security feeds reviewed for the past 24 hours. Someone unauthorized has been in Conference B and I want to know who it is!” Lester’s face looked pinched with fear that he would never admit; when his eyes met mine I nodded. He shoved the door open for me, and we poured out into the September sunshine.

I set her down on the bench under a small grove of trees at the back of the building.  
“I think we’d all do well to take our work elsewhere for the day,” I told Lester. Abby blinked, breathed deeply and put her hand to her head, but looked far less dizzy than before. 

“Tell us what you felt like,” Lester said, crouching next to her, “so that I can tell the chemists what to look for.”

“Disoriented, confused … suggestible? Is that a word?” Abby rubbed her face with one hand. “If one of you had told me the moon was a Diplodocus egg, I would have believed you.”

“That’s not good. That’s not good at all.” Connor’s mouth set in a line. “I’ll get you some of my tea, Abby; it hasn’t been in the building.” And he ran off toward his car.

Lester frowned. “Why would anyone set up Conference B? It’s generally used by department heads. Normally, I would have moved the meeting to Conference A, but I understand it’s being painted for some reason.”

Abby’s mouth twisted at the corners. “Sometimes animals like to eat their meat in private. And they’re fond of mock-killing it, no matter that it’s already dead. Remember that escape we had a month ago, when the Compsognathus got out of the holding pen with its dinner? It’s difficult to get chicken blood out of the wallboard once it’s soaked in.”

The medic, whom I recognized from various infirmary visits, arrived. “Now, how are you feeling?” he asked.

At this point Connor returned and poured her a cup of tea from his steaming thermos, which she accepted gladly. 

I took Lester aside. “I think we need to meet somewhere else today.”

“It seems to be a useful idea. Any thoughts on where?” 

“I have a few, actually.” I took out my own mobile. “Hi. Is the back room available for today?”

As I made the reservation, Lester went back on his own mobile to arrange for the chemistry department to borrow a secure laboratory from a local Army base that had its own hospital and research facilities. Just as he finished his call I saw Stephen coming toward us from outdoor parking at an easy run.

“Where have you been?” Lester snapped at him.

“Stuck in traffic. There’s a hell of a mess about three miles back.” Stephen pointed toward the nearest major highway. “A lorry jackknifed and cut off all the lanes heading this way; I’ve been sitting in traffic there for an hour.” He glanced toward Abby. “Did we have an anomaly here?”

Lester hrmphed and pressed buttons on his mobile; the information he saw seemed to calm him. “No, we apparently had some sort of chemical spill in a conference room.” He waved a hand. “Everyone! All of you except Chemistry can go home for the day. Chemistry, please go to this address to analyze the air samples, and I expect you to continue to observe complete security concerning them, as much as possible.” He scribbled the address on a business card that he handed to the chief chemist. “Sergeant, please accompany the Chemistry staff while they do their analysis. The building is locked down, I presume?”

Gunnery Sergeant Simmons nodded. “Yes, sir. I was the last man out, and I can tell you that the building is secure.”

“See that it stays that way. Where is Captain Braley?"

"He's lecturing at Sandhurst today, sir. Developments in Military Strategy, every other Thursday."

"And the wrong people undoubtedly knew it," Lester muttered to himself. "Sergeant,   
I am sorry that the men who are billeted here will not be able to return to their quarters today, but I want to give the air system a full 18 hours to ventilate whatever that was. And then I want you and your men to go through every room and test the air to make sure it’s safe before we return.”

“Yes, sir.” Simmons gave Lester a sharp nod and went to talk to his men. 

“Cutter –“ Lester began to say, when Leek put a hand on his arm. “Now, what is it?” 

“Will you want me to stay today, sir?”

Lester paused, closed his mouth, and said, “No, I believe you can take the day along with the others. Be here bright and early tomorrow.” He turned back to me. “Now, as I was saying –“

“But your appointments –“

“I believe I am capable of handling my appointments for one day, Leek, thank you.”

Leek blinked, shrugged in my direction and headed for the employee parking area along with the others.

“I don’t like this,” I told Lester. “Poor Abby’s the canary in the coal mine for us.”

“Personally and professionally, I’m furious about it. That is supposed to be the most secure facility in the UK. Excuse me for a moment.” Lester’s mouth was set in a hard line as he went to talk to the Special Forces squad who were listening to Simmons. 

I walked back to the bench where Abby was sitting. She had a bit more color in her face and was looking much healthier. “How are you feeling?”

“A whole lot better. I don’t know what came over me.” She lifted the cup in her hand. “Connor made some good tea; I’d share it round if we had more cups.”

I sat down next to her. “Listen. We’re not going back in there today, not until security has gone over it with a fine-toothed comb. But we’re still going to have our briefing, in the most secure non-secure place I can think of.”

* * *

The barrista’s eyebrows went up when he saw the crowd of us come in, but relaxed again when he saw me. “Mr. Cutter, right. Go on back.”

Lester, walking next to me, murmured, “What in hell were you thinking? This cybercafé is about as secure as a sponge.” 

“There’s security, and then there’s security.” I pointed at the photo behind the bar. “They know what she looks like and they won’t let her in. Right, Guido?”

“Right you are, sir. She even shows up on the street outside the place, I’ll buzz you immediately.”

“I do appreciate it,” I told him, slipping him an extra twenty-pound note. Guido pocketed it as if it were spare change, gave me a respectful nod and waved for the server to accompany us to the back room and take our food and drink orders.

“Oooh,” Connor breathed as he settled into one of the creaky wooden armchairs. “I could get used to this kind of meeting.”

“Don’t.” Lester glanced through the menu, ordered a bottomless cup of Jamaican Blue Mountain for himself and a platter of assorted pastries and sandwiches for the room. He leaned his arms on the chair, steepling his fingers and biding his time until everyone else had ordered and the waiter had left. “So, Cutter. I presume you have some reason for us to be meeting here? Besides the ambiance?” He glanced at the telly, which was turned off, and the wall paneling scarred by decades of enthusiastic football and rugby fans. 

“Yes. It’s the least likely place for Helen to come back to, or to attempt to infiltrate. You saw the photos the owner took; she’s too identifiable here.” I leaned back in the chair. “It’s your meeting. I’m just providing the location.”

“Right.” Lester glanced around the table. “Let’s get on with it. Reports?”

* * *

When we were allowed back into the building, the first thing I did was to check my desk – and, as I'd expected, it had been ransacked, as had Connor's and Stephen's. Lester was livid. The SFs who had locked down the building and who had been on guard to keep it empty had to endure five minutes of Lester's anger, but it only turned the flame higher under their own upset. They were good at their jobs and proud of it, and the mere idea that unknown people could move in and out of the building infuriated them. 

The chemists were unable to identify the compound that had polluted the air in Conference B. It wasn't on their charts or in their books, and it contained some trace elements they didn't recognize.

* * *

We had four false alarms on the anomaly alert system in two days; Connor was frantic, tearing it down and rechecking it each time. He had taken to sleeping on the small couch in the lounge, feet hanging off the end, so that he would be there for the next event. When the basketball player disappeared on the Isle of Dogs, he hadn't been home in three days, and the lack of sleep wasn't helping his relationship with Abby even before then were out on the boat.

Connor and Abby were sniping at each other from the start. From where I stood, and tried to stay out of it, it was hurt pride on Connor’s side and honest angry pain on Abby’s. Then the future shark showed up, when Jenny was in the water, and Stephen shot it just in time. But the shark had swallowed the basketball and the shoe, nothing more. Its proboscis tongue with the teeth made my stomach roll over. 

There was the eerie singing, or whatever, that Stephen and I heard in the sewer tunnels, and the sense of being watched. Abby told me later that she saw the mers looking up out of the water at her when we were in the boat; she was certain that her looking back at them was the reason she was taken, for they certainly could have upset the small boats and taken all of us if they’d wanted.

“Why did they want me?” she asked me, a few days later in my office. “Food, or –“ She glanced at the door and the glass walls around us and spoke quietly. Connor was nowhere in sight, but that meant nothing; he was likely to glide past on his skateboard any time he thought he needed the speed. 

“He’s tearing apart the anomaly detector again,” I said, just as quietly. “As for why the mers wanted you, I can suggest a few hypotheses, but none of them are particularly appetizing. Er, sorry.”

“Ow.” She made a face. “Guess this is one of those times when being blonde isn’t as helpful as it could be. I mean, look at the group of us and see which one stands out.”

“You could easily be right about that,” I said. She still looked so fragile, as if her time in the tank had washed away her innate strength. “Are you all right now?”

“Oh, sure.” She shrugged one thin shoulder. “I’m fine.”

“And Connor –“ I made some gesture intended to indicate my memory of him grabbing her and protecting her with his body on the yellow cliffs on the other side of the anomaly.

Abby shook her head, once. “You ever have to study religious stuff when you were a kid? Bible stories?”

“Yeah. What about it?”

“That bit about Peter denying things? Just rename him Connor.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, please.” She put her hand up. “I mean, thanks, but things are hard enough right now.”

“Okay.” The blue shadows under her eyes made her look transparent, as if she'd break if she were jostled. “You’ll tell me if there’s anything I can do to make your life better, right?”

“If you find a magic wand somewhere, I’ll take you up on that.” She strengthened her wavering smile, refilled her mug and went off to continue overseeing the Anomaly Traveler’s Guide.

My own relationship with Lester was hardly any improvement over hers with Connor, considering that the man fired me for going off on my own to follow my hunches without calling for backup. Granted, my hunch had gotten me knocked out for my trouble, but I was willing to pay that price to find out that the same man, the cleaner who’d appeared at the raptor-plagued shopping mall, could also be found wearing military garb and, according to Connor, working at the ARC. I wasn’t willing to pay Abby’s life for that, and for that reason I didn’t protest Lester’s firing me and putting Stephen in charge. 

But Lester’s charging in to fire me without even listening was unlike him; bureaucrat though he was, he had been willing to listen to us all along, and he knew enough not to trust Leek. This time, however, he had been backed up by a smug-faced Leek, as well as by Jenny, who wore no expression at all. It wasn’t unusual for Jenny to hide her feelings; she was the consummate professional. However, it felt odd to see Leek looking quite so smug, as if Lester were doing what Leek wanted done.

Perhaps Lester was playing a deeper game than I knew of, stringing Leek along until he could tie him up in knots. Perhaps there were pressures from Whitehall that I knew nothing about.

Lester’s acknowledgement that I’d been right to continue searching, delivered in a sarcastic backhand comment, had been more his style. He’d given me faint praise and blasted Stephen, but Stephen had taken the criticism in stride. If anything, the crisis had brought the team closer together – except for Abby and Connor, who each separately had drawn closer to Stephen, a move that I approved as Stephen was too much on his own these days. I wished he’d find some nice dark-haired, dark-eyed girl who wasn’t homicidal, loony or harboring a dangerous beast, and fall in love with her. He was too self-contained. He needed more human contact than we could give him, the kind of contact he would have had at the University where even casual greetings, working in the library or consulting on a project would remind him that he had people around him who were willing to be there for him, to whatever degree he would allow. Although we were the primary exploration team at the ARC, too often the work put us apart from the rest of the ARC staff, in their separate departments with their separate projects.

* * *

“Good morning, Professor. What would you like to shoot today?” Gunner Sergeant Simmons was in a jocular mood, with no one in the infirmary and the SFs out and about at their posts. “I can set you up with something straight from the research boys that barely needs to be aimed, or if you’re looking for something that takes more skill, I have a sweet little Uzi that kicks a bit but is very comfortable in the hand.”

“Actually, I’m down here on a different errand.” I settled myself for a fight as Simmons raised an eyebrow. “I’d like to review the security tapes for the last few days, maybe a week or so.”

“I suppose you’ve gotten clearance from Himself upstairs?” 

I nodded. I’d murmured something about security tapes in Lester’s hearing and he’d waved a hand impatiently. He might have been on the phone at the time.

“No problem then. Let me set you up in here.” He preceded me into the second seat at the guardpost. “Should I ask what you’re looking for?”

“I’m not quite sure myself. Something that doesn’t fit.”

“Ah. I’ll leave you to it, then. Corporal Chapman, there, will assist you.” And he went back to his armaments, whistling.

"Any particular cameras, sir?" Chapman asked. I'd worked with him in the field; he was the most like me in build of any of the SFs, and had served as my bodyguard more than once.

“Conference room B, and the hall outside it, and also the lower level entrance hallway.”

“We went over the Conference B recording second by second after the gas problem,” he said as he set up the playback. “But maybe you’ll find something we didn’t. New pair of eyes, and all.”

I persisted in thinking of them as tapes, even thought I knew they weren’t. The Conference B tape had nothing for the three days before the incident, but something felt off. I played back the one from the hallway outside, then the room itself. As in the other conference rooms, there were vertical blinds to block light if desired during presentations. When I replayed the room tape again, I saw it.

“Chapman. Tell me if you see what I see.”

He moved his chair over next to mine. “What is it?”

“The edge of that blind, third one from the left. Just watch it as I run this again.” 

If nobody was in the room, and there was no air movement or other motion, why did the edge of the blind move aside and then back in place? And why only that one blind?

Chapman swore under his breath. “The security camera’s been interfered with. Why didn’t anyone see it before?” He checked the time signature; the blip was an hour before the meeting.

“Let me check the entrance hallway – no, nothing there. So it’s something happening only in the room itself.” I ran it back and – there it was, just for a fraction of a second, the glow of an anomaly just starting to open, reflected in the glass of the window behind those vertical blinds.

“See that?” I pointed to the bit of glitter from the window. “That’s the reflection of an anomaly opening just beyond the camera range, over next to the opposite wall.”

“Wouldn’t Mr. Temple’s device pick it up?”

“It should certainly do that, but it’s been having problems with false alarms. Maybe they’re not so false.”

“Not if they result in someone leaving gas bombs in the conference rooms.”

“Is that what it was?”

Chapman shook his head. “We found evidence of a small device under a chair that emitted some nasty substances, certainly enough to make Miss Maitland ill. If all of you had stayed in the room, and that anomaly had reopened, you would have been helpless.”

I shuddered. “Indeed.”

“When did you want to look at the lower hallway?” 

“If it makes any sense, at a time when Connor was there. He told me he saw someone whom I don’t think belongs in the ARC, and I’d like to check.”

“An intruder? Why didn’t he come to us?” Chapman’s eyes widened with comprehension. “Or was the possible intruder dressed like the SFs?”

“Got it in one. I don’t want to go round asking rude questions if it turns out that you’ve got a new man in who happens to look like someone I’ve seen at anomaly sites because he’s the other guy’s cousin or something like that.”

Chapman nodded. “Well, then, let’s get at it. You’re sure it would be that hallway?”

“Connor didn’t say, but it seems to me that if he was anywhere else in the building someone would have noticed, no matter how he’s dressed.”

I’m not that sort of technician, so I couldn’t describe how Chapman managed to narrow down the recordings to only ones that included Connor over the last month. It took a while but at last we found one in which Connor was turning away from the back door and turned back to watch the men who were leaving.

“That one. Can you make this group of people any clearer? And can you identify them for me?”

Chapman focused in on the group of men in SF outfits headed out the door. He enlarged the image, made it clearer, and then sat back in his chair and stared at it.

“I’ve got to get the Sergeant.” And he was out of the room, and back again with Simmons before I could stop him. Chapman took his seat again, Simmons looming behind him.

“I gather you found something, sir?” Simmons asked me.

I nodded. “Sergeant, can you identify these men?”

Simmons leaned forward and stared hard at the screen. “No, sir, I can’t. And that disturbs me more than I can tell you.” 

I put up a hand to stop him before he could click Lester on his headset. “Before you call Lester, there’s something I need to tell you.” Simmons paused; I rushed onward. “Someone has been searching through the things on my desk; it’s happened several times. When I get up to leave, I make sure to take a last look at where everything is; when I come back, things have been moved on top and at least once the drawers were rifled.”

“There’s no chance that one of your team was looking for something, I suppose, sir?” Chapman said.

I shook my head. “No chance at all; they have their own work areas. If they did go looking for something, they’d tell me first thing. This is different; it’s someone who doesn’t do our work, looking around.” Breathing felt difficult; I hated feeling so much like a target. “And not just at night. During the day, the instant that I step away from the desk. If I get up for a cup of coffee, when I come back things have been moved.”

Chapman was already scrambling to put the security camera of my office and the hall outside it on the monitor. “During the last month, sir?”

“Yes.” 

Simmons cocked his head. “That’s truly disturbing, sir. Why didn’t you say something before?”

“I’m the mad one who says he remembers things differently anyway, according to Lester. How far do you think I’d be believed?”

“Well, you’re believed here, sir, and that’s a fact. I’ve not seen you come up with anything you haven’t substantiated.” Simmons nodded once, as if that were the definitive answer. Perhaps, for the SFs, it was. “We’ll just have to find the evidence to show Sir James.”

It took nearly an hour of tedious searching, but by the time we recognized the reflected flicker of an anomaly showing up four times in my office, Simmons was swearing under his breath in a way he never would have done near a superior officer. “We’re going to fisheye those lenses till they’re horizontal, sir, if we have to. That damned thing is showing up in the one corner of any room that’s not covered. It’s as if someone knows exactly what our building looks like from the inside.”

“Yes, it is.” My mobile was going off but I waited a moment longer. “Let’s keep this between us for now; see what you can do to adjust the camera.”

“You don’t want Sir James to know?” Chapman was wide-eyed, wary.

“Let’s say that I would love to be able to let Lester know if it didn’t involve anyone else in the building, including his secretary.”

“Ah.” Simmons gave me an approving glance, and both of them nodded. "I'll have someone check those cameras, sir. Thank you for showing us." He strode away, a man with a purpose.

I turned back to Chapman, who was frowning. "You have suspicions?"

"Not in so many words, sir." Chapman lowered his voice, and I leaned in. "A man knows, when he takes this job, that he'll be protecting people whether he likes 'em or not. And most people here are fine folk indeed. There's the odd one or two of the scientists who need to understand security arrangements better. But Mr. Leek… need not try so hard to make it difficult for us."

"How so?"

Chapman's voice dropped lower. "When's the last time you recall that we had a full-scale security drill?"

I started to say 'not while I've been here', but caught myself. "I can't remember any." My mobile rang.

"Exactly. We haven't, not since he arrived. It's little bits here and there, but no full-scale drill that would give us a chance to run the harder scenarios."

The ringing became insistent, and I turned away from Chapman, nodding in apology. “There’s an anomaly in a drainage pipe in an old industrial zone; go see to it, would you?” Lester said.

“On my way.” I pocketed the mobile. "Thank you," I said to Chapman. "Thank you for believing me."

"You've never led us wrong yet, sir. And it would take a lot for me to go against someone that Gunnery Sergeant Simmons supports."

* * *

I hate sand. And I knew, the moment I saw the girl, Taylor, sitting on the rocks, that she hated it as much as I did. She was a pistol, ordering Stephen around, telling me she was fine and had her own plans for getting back. Smart enough to get us up on the rocks with her, away from the giant Silurian scorpions. But she’d seen the soldiers die, only a few yards away, and hadn’t been able to do anything but cover her ears so she wouldn’t hear their screams. 

When I looked through the recording night-vision goggles and saw what had happened to them, it made my stomach pitch. But when I saw the man whom I’d seen near the waterfront, whom Connor had seen in the ARC, whom Gunnery Sergeant Simmons did not know, it was as if another cord was being tied to a net that stretched across universes and times. 

He’d shown up four times so far: in the mall where the raptors were, at the ARC, near the mers, and now in the Silurian near the scorpions. 

Why?

Granted, the version of the universe where I found myself was militarized far beyond the world I’d known. The ARC had its own military unit of Special Forces soldiers. The requirements for identification in daily life were far greater than I’d known, even when I'd served in the army so long ago. There was a sense of awareness of strangers that was palpable among the people in the area. Even the country people living near the Forest of Dean didn’t seem to blink when they saw heavily armed soldiers in the area.

But who would want to do surveillance on my team? We were supposed to be on the side of the angels. We weren’t a threat to anyone; we were dealing with the incursions from other times to protect the public safety – though Jenny Lewis spent a lot of time making sure none of the official public safety people knew what was going on or why, in order to keep both the creatures and the team safe.

It didn’t make sense.

As I trudged through the rocky landscape above the sea of sand with Stephen and Taylor, I considered who could be running the show from within the ARC. I was more than ninety percent certain it wasn't Lester, though some of my reasons were more emotional than factual, and though Stephen was inclined to be suspicious of him. I’d asked Stephen what he thought of Lester back when we were driving to work together, and he’d said that the man was too competent at the wrong things. Perhaps that had been a reference to Lester’s alleged work as a hatchet man for the Prime Minister. No, wait, that was something the Lester in my own world had said in my hearing once, and I was conflating that Lester with this one. Maybe I didn’t know what Stephen had meant.

Then the unknown soldier himself appeared, threatening us, taking our water and the glasses, and I dared him to shoot me while drawing the scorpions to us. He shot the sand at my feet, sealing his own fate, and when Stephen demanded to know who was behind it all, he took his secrets to the grave.

I got back the goggles and the water, but I felt shaken, as did Stephen and Taylor, who for once had lost her quirky composure and looked as if she were near tears. Stephen was breathing hard as if he’d run a race and come in a tight second. He gave me a look that said he would have more to say when we were home again.

After we made our way through the next anomaly, willing it to take us somewhere near home, it was almost anticlimactic to find ourselves in an amusement park with actors playing cavemen. Abby and Connor were overjoyed to find us alive; Lester almost broke into a smile at seeing us. 

After Taylor was back home with her stepdad, and I’d agreed to hire her when she got out of school, I went back to the ARC with Jenny, who shrugged away the missed engagement party in a calmly gracious way. “At least my outfit isn’t covered in blood or slime this time,” she said, shifting the car into drive. “It could have been worse.”

“It could have,” I agreed, still seeing in my mind’s eye the swift slipping of the soldier’s fingers under the sand. We had lost him, before we could even find out who he was; I had nearly lost Stephen as well. The cost of knowledge gained through traveling anomalies was rising too quickly.

Back at the ARC, I wanted to go through the goggles’ recording again and see what sense I could make of some of it. I hadn’t paid enough attention to their conversation before, because I’d been so riveted by the action. Were the soldiers there to collect samples of some kind, or to shadow us, or both, or something else? I should have kept the goggles with me when I went to get a mug of coffee.

I should have kept them with me. I should have had more sense, considering what Chapman had found on the surveillance, but I was too tired and the relief of escaping from the monsters in the sand made me careless. I didn’t have the sense of a rock. And when I came back the goggles were gone.

I left a message for Chapman to contact me, and went home. The day had been enough of a disaster. 

The door to the house was just barely unlocked. I went in cautiously, expecting a fight, an anomaly, a creature – and found Stephen in the kitchen, checking on something in the oven.

“What’re you doing here?” I asked when my heart had subsided to normal. “You left the front door unlocked. Anyone could’ve come in.”

“I felt like cooking, and I didn’t think you’d want to go back to my place.”

There could be only one reason. "Helen?"

"I found a bloody towel on the bathroom floor, and the first-aid kit's been torn apart. She's taken most of it, I think."

I poured myself a shot of Scotch, neat, and one for him as well. We raised the glasses to one another and downed them straight.

"Are you staying here the night?" I asked. "Spare room's available, should you want it."

Stephen shook his head. "I think I'd better go back and face the music, whatever it sounds like. She'd be suspicious if I didn't show up eventually; I can stop by a pub on the way and acquire a patina of beer and smoke."

"Be careful with her." That didn't come out quite as I wanted it to. "Take care of yourself. We've no idea what technology she has access to, or how she might use it."

"Well, to start with, she's able to open and close anomalies at will. I'll get my hands on that, if I can."

"It'd be wonderful, but don't risk yourself unnecessarily."

He opened his eyes wide in mockery. "Risk? Unnecessarily?"

"Don't give me that. You may not be the same man I knew before, but some things don't change."

His smile went crooked at the corner. 

"What?"

"Never mind," he said. "It was an old joke, and it doesn't travel well." He checked the oven again, took out a baking pan and turned off the timer. "Just tell me something," he said, turning back to me. "Do you care what I do with Helen Cutter, in the line of duty, as you might say?"

"Stephen, no." I handed him two plates and he started dishing out meat and vegetables. "I care that you might get badly hurt by her, but that's all. She's not done with us yet, as I told you a while back, and I don't want her hurting you on my account."

"Oh, no worries about that," he said. "If she takes a knife to me it'd be on my own account, all the way. But I've been taking some self-defense lessons from SF Chapman."

"She fights dirty," I reminded him. "And she's got at least one man inside the ARC." I told him what Chapman and I had found during the surveillance review.

"Think that's who's rifling your desk?"

I shook my head. "We saw him go down into the sand. It's got to be someone else. The recording was before that."

"Maybe she's got a line on twins, or something," he said.

"She skips through universes like it's a game of hopscotch." I reached for the bottle for one more round. "What's to keep her from collecting all the versions of the same soldier from everywhere, for her own purposes." Then I heard what I said and stared at Stephen in horror.

"Perish the thought." He shook his head at a second dram. "You going to eat, or do I get it all?"

 

. . .


	6. Man down

When Stephen didn't show up the next week to help deal with the Columbian mammoth on the M-25, I began to worry. It had been enough time for me to wonder what Helen was about to pull next.

Abby and Connor did far more than their share of work that day, corralling the poor creature and transporting it to the ARC; at times I wished I were the one in the lorry pushing buttons to keep an upset pachyderm enclosed, and Connor were the one in the car trying in vain to keep that frightened woman from screaming, but no matter. It wasn't the mammoth's fault that it came through an anomaly in search of a mate or a family group and instead found itself facing noisy, smelly metal monsters full of noisy, smelly (to a mammoth) people. 

And then Stephen arrived, with Helen, and I knew something was off immediately. He was arguing her case, speaking on her behalf. I didn't even need to get close to him to see that his pupils were blown wide open.

She'd drugged him, somehow. I'd be willing to bet that he'd no clue he was under the influence.

Meanwhile she was lounging there, watching the two of us go at each other as if she was a spectator at the Colosseum betting on the gladiators. That wasn't the way my pre-anomaly Helen would have behaved. I would have wondered if she was drugged as well, and what she was on, but her eyes looked normal, and her posture was relaxed but wary.

I had to hold up my end of things, rejecting Helen's views and looking furious, though what I really wanted to do was to drag Stephen away and put him into the infirmary at the ARC while the doctors tested him for every mind-altering chemical they knew. It wasn't hard to stay mad while looking at Helen, though. I rejected their arguments, stomped away and back to the ARC, and hoped all that time that Stephen was actually playing a long game with me to ensnare Helen, instead of being ensnared by her.

When he came back to the ARC, he was still high as a kite. Helen was nowhere around. I couldn't depend on him coming back to himself, and I had to keep playing it out. When he taunted me about sleeping with Helen, I hit him. Normally, his reflexes were far quicker than mine; he should have ducked, or caught my arm, but he didn't. 

If Stephen couldn't stop me from hitting him, he had to be drugged out of his mind. 

And then he quit, and stormed out. 

I didn't know what to make of it. I still wanted to haul him down for tests, but that was out of the question. I should have taken Abby, at least, into my confidence, but I was confused by what Stephen had been saying, and trying to think my way around it so that I'd be two steps or more ahead of Helen, if possible. So I rebuffed Connor when he tried to make peace between us. The look of disappointment on Connor's face made me want to tell him everything, but Abby had been right; the man had no poker face at all.

We'd had another fake anomaly the day before; whoever was making it happen had to be testing the system in different ways, checking our reactions. It was entirely reasonable for me to be sitting with Connor as he appeared to be debugging it yet again, but was instead hacking the intruder's code to bite back at him, to shut down the intrusive computer system while downloading all of its information to us. He arranged for the files that would come in to be sent to a specific computer, set behind security that made them read-only for the larger system, so that Lester, Abby or I could go through them; nothing that was downloaded would be able to escape into the rest of the computers.

I noticed Leek watching us from the balcony as Connor worked. He looked far too interested in what we were doing, but then he always did.

"You know there'll be another fake anomaly," Connor muttered.

"Hell, we'll set up our own," I muttered back. "The play's the thing."

"Whoever's doing this hasn't got a conscience." He hit the last keys a little harder for emphasis.

* * *

Connor had set it up so he could trigger the fake from his mobile: a fake anomaly alert, big enough to let a T. rex through. The supposed anomaly was to open in a small Gothic-style church just outside the City, quiet enough that we would be able to hear them coming.

And as we waited, Abby, Connor and I sat on the floor in front of the front pew, and I learned that Rex had been stolen – probably by Connor's ex-girlfriend, whom he apparently had drop-kicked in a text message.

"What kind of girl steals your lizard when you break up with her?" I wondered aloud.

Abby shook her head. Connor picked up a hymnal, gave her one of his rare sweet smiles, and began to sing, softly, "All things bright and beautiful…" Abby joined in.

In its own way, it was a perfect moment as I sat there waiting, listening to their voices. I wished that Stephen could have been there also, with his calm light baritone; he would have enjoyed it.

And then the SFs arrived, a full complement of them, with Jenny Lewis at their head, charging into the chapel, and my heart sank. I hadn't wanted Jenny to be the villain, but she had answered our false alarm: she had to be the one. 

I pulled a pistol on Jenny, and nearly got shot by SFs for my troubles, but that was what it took to find out that Oliver Leek had told her to do it. He had to have got the alarm first, on his jacked-in technology. He had to be the one behind what was going on.

Behind Jenny stood Gunnery Sgt. Simmons, who'd had his rifle aimed at my head the moment earlier, who'd been ordering me to lower my weapon – for anyone else, he would not have given so many warnings. I knew he was thinking of what we had found on the security recording, the strange man in the building, the access to offices and materials and knowledge that had to have been okayed by someone in authority – someone who wielded the authority of the director of the ARC.

But Leek hadn't come; he'd sent Jenny instead. He'd gone down to the docks when we'd dealt with the mers, but he wasn't coming out for this. Was it because he knew it was a trap? Unlikely. 

Leek must have something else in mind.

I stood there with my pistol at my side and looked around at all the SFs – all the SFs of the ARC, every last one of the men on active duty that morning, only a handful of the squadron of SFs who guarded the ARC. 

"Where are the rest of your men, Gunnery Sergeant?" I asked.

"At Sandhurst for special training, by order of Sir James." Simmons's eyes met mine, and we both knew better. 

"I'd be willing to bet Lester knows nothing about it." I turned back to Abby and Connor, who wore identical horrified expressions. "This is Leek's work, all the way. We've got to get back to the ARC."

Simmons swore the air indigo and didn't even bother to hide it under his breath.

We all ran out to the vehicles and broke every speed law getting back. There were too many spaces in the parking lot, not just the ones we'd vacated.

"The science staff's not here," Connor said. "Biologists, chemists, all the rest. They must have been ordered away; Botany and Chemistry have got a joint lab experiment running and none of them would willingly leave." He pointed at the corner where they usually parked, next to the SF vehicles to put them under safer surveillance than out in the general lot, ever since a 'creationist' protest some years earlier. I suppose it would have been too much to hope that that particular bit of insanity hadn't replicated itself across universes. 

"Then Sir James is alone in there," Cpl. Chapman said.

The SFs hit the building doors an instant later. Forget who was protecting whom; we were right there running with them.

Gunnery Sgt. Simmons sniffed as we came through the first set of doors into the ARC entry hall. "There's blood in the air. Look sharp!" He and the SFs crashed through the other doors and fanned out.

"There's blood." Abby pointed to a handprint on the wall, near the kitchenette, and a streak on the floor. I felt cold as concrete. We tracked the trickle of blood from the open center of the ARC through the halls, the upper-floor weapons cache, past the outer offices and supply rooms. The upstairs weapons ready room was a mess; the weight room was even worse, with blood spattered on the walls and ceiling. Abby's face was paper white. Connor's wasn't much better. The SFs expressions looked hard and sharp as their knives.

Simmons hit the door unlock button for the central core, and a SF pulled the door open and then stopped still. Abby ducked under his arm, and did the same. She could barely breathe. Connor and I piled up behind her, and the SFs behind us, aiming over our shoulders.

"Ssssh. Quietly, please." Lester's voice was as gentle as I'd ever heard it. "He's a bit protective right now. It took a while for him to calm down."

Lester stood inside the coiled trunk of the Columbian mammoth, which towered over him in the center of the room, shifting in place uneasily from one massive foot to another. Its right tusk was dark with blood, and the whites were showing at the edges of its dark unreadable eyes. A smear crossed a quarter of the room at head-height on the wall, and a crumpled bloody form lay unmoving beneath the end of it.

"Future predator," Connor whispered, his voice tight.

"Yes, yes, good boy, good mammoth." Lester patted the trunk. The end of it came up inquisitively toward his face, and he patted it the way one might pat a good dog on the head, saying quiet things I couldn't quite hear. The mammoth unwrapped its trunk from around him and let him walk toward us, but it followed right behind, tasting the air with its trunk raised above him to determine if we were threatening its chosen human.

"Abby, you know my friend here, my good mammoth friend," Lester said in a quiet, patient voice, as if he were introducing very small children to the Queen. "Mammoth, you know Abby, don't you? She'll take care of you and make sure you have some very nice apples and melons to eat, because you've been such a good boy today." He put his hand on the trunk that was reaching toward him, and Abby slowly moved forward to stand next to him and be sniffed. "See? All these people are my friends, like Abby."

"Believe me, we're all very glad you're here, big guy," I said, and stood still to be sniffed over. The tip of the trunk fluttered over the rest of the crowd, who had lowered their weapons and stood very still. Once this was accomplished, the mammoth allowed Lester and Abby to lead him back to his stall in the holding area.

I made sure they were well on their way, then went to look at what remained of the gray-skinned predator. Crushed as it was in death, it still made me shiver. But the head was more or less intact, with an odd round box on top with wiring going into the skull; this had to be how the animal was being controlled. Some sort of electronic signal, sent directly to the brain. I shook my head, disgusted at the use of what was essentially electroshock therapy on an animal, however dangerous. Had it been in pain when it attacked? Or had all its conscious thoughts been wiped in favor of its instinctive reptile brain that would make it only fight, flee or seek pleasure?

"He'll imprint on you, and then what will you do?" Connor said when Lester and Abby returned. Abby's hair was completely askew from being snuffled into; apparently the animal liked her shampoo.

"Right now, I don't really care," Lester said. "I'd ask Her Majesty to give him a medal, but that would mean outing the ARC to the world and I'm not ready for that. We do need to get him outdoors, though. Abby, do you think that zoo you've worked with might be able to arrange something for us?"

Abby blinked. "I can ask. They were wonderful about the camels. And it's a private zoo, so if they want to shut off an area from public view, they can do it; they can say it's for part of a research grant or something."

"They need a research grant? I'll get them one." Lester was still covered in blood, his clothing torn, but his smile was blinding. "Our mammoth is going to have first-class treatment until we can return him to his own time." He ran a hand over his clothing. "God, I need a shower, and fresh clothes."

"We can have your spare suit brought down to the infirmary, sir," Gunnery Sgt. Simmons said, with a proprietary glance toward the bloodstains on Lester's face and hands. "It would be good to get you patched up, sir, disinfect those wounds."

"You're right." Lester started toward the door, but turned in a few steps to say, "By the way, the prime mover of all this mess was Leek, and he's barking mad. Ask someone to look around and see what he might have walked off with, would you? And start tracking him down. I want him dead or alive, and at the moment I don't care which. Although, Cutter?"

"Yes?"

"The children have been asking for a pet. If you can't send him back…" Lester raised an eyebrow at me.

"I'm sure he'd be very protective of them, Lester. They're your children; they'd smell like you."

Sir James Lester sniffed at his torn clothing. "God, I hope not." And headed for the infirmary and its shower.

* * *

Jenny was cross with me; fair enough. I'd held a gun to her head. She did get the point that Leek was the traitor. I thought she was actually more angry at him for playing her than at me, but we didn't have time to go into it then. In retrospect, I should have said something, then, because it would have made things go more easily later in the day, but we never know these things ahead of time, do we?

* * *

From the moment we all gathered around the computer display in the center room, I felt uncomfortable. We were missing something, something big. It was hard to concentrate with the panel van there that, we all assumed, had contained the predator that had attacked Lester. Someone had driven it there, while the SFs were out, someone who knew all the codes and could get in without comment. It made me wonder just how many people Leek had working for him. The SFs were glaring at it also, but it hadn't been processed for fingerprints or evidence yet, so there it stood and we tried not to breathe on it too heavily.

Meanwhile, Connor tried to crack the password to Leek's account, with suggestions from the audience.

I don't know what substance Lester has the cleaning staff use to polish the floor in the center room; the floor isn't marble but it has that kind of smoothness. The instant that Connor succeeded, the reflection of the red light on the bomb under the vehicle glowed like the top of a Christmas tree against the white floor.

I yelled for them all to leave and they ran, except for Connor, brave despite his fear, who stayed to help me defuse the bomb. With the lack of time, I hauled out the battery and pulled the connections, which stopped the clock. He pulled himself out from under the truck, boneless with relief, and we collapsed together with our arms around each other's shoulders, breathing hard for a few minutes.

"You know," Connor said at last, "the SFs are going to take the piss out of us for getting fingerprints all over the place."

"At least the truck's still here for them," I said.

When the SFs came back in, they got out the evidence kits first thing, fingerprinted us, and said not a word about the past half hour while their forensic specialist went over the vehicle. 

Chapman caught up with me in the kitchenette, between apology and apoplexy, to tell me that their bomb expert had been specifically named in the orders for the trip to Sandhurst, for a class on computerized fuses. "He could have dealt with this in an instant, you know. He's that good." 

"I know." I poured him some of Sir James's Kona coffee; I'd stowed a packet of it there for emergencies, and this surely counted. 

Chapman took the first gulp as if it had been the ordinary office coffee, or the builder's tea they brewed downstairs in the SF's area, but slowed down when he tasted it and savored the brew. "You know, sir," he said, after a little while, "it's not that we don't appreciate it, but you do tend to jump in where angels fear to tread."

"Aye, and look where it's got me."

"But that's our job, sir. You keep doing that, and you'll put us SFs out on the dole."

I glanced at him over the cup's rim. "Did you really expect me to let that lizard blow all our work sky-high?"

"Not for a second, sir." He finished his cup and set it on the counter. "Thanks very much for that. Only Watkins and I like coffee; the rest want their tea. "

"Here's some for you and Watkins, then. It's borrowed from Lester's private stock." I gave him a sealed packet from my storage area, behind the pipes in the cupboard. "Find out what kind of tea the men like and I'll get them the good stuff there, too. It's appreciation, not bribery, considering you all had your guns pointed at me this morning."

"The gunnery sergeant's partial to Islay Malt, sir." He slipped the packet into a pocket on his vest.

"I'll keep that in mind."

* * *

Stephen should have shown up; the damned drug should have worn off by then. Why hadn't he come back? He should have known we were playacting for Helen's sake. Didn't he know that? Didn't he? How drugged had she gotten him? What was she using on him? From the state of his pupils, it had to have narcotic elements in it, but no narcotic made my quiet Stephen so argumentative. Combining a downer with an upper could be deadly, but Helen wouldn't care as long as she got what she wanted.

Where was he? 

Where was she?

* * *

I showed Abby, Connor and Jenny the neural clamp that I'd taken from the skull of the predator that had attacked Lester. "It must be how Leek was controlling it. It's operated by remote radio signals." 

Jenny turned away, disgusted. "How many of those things could he have?"

"There's no way to know." 

Abby glanced around. "Remote signals, coming in here?"

"Had to be. All we would have to do is track where this signal is coming from, to find Leek."

"I'm on it." Connor went off with Jenny.

Abby stayed a moment, to press me to call Stephen; I refused. 

"Stephen's made his bed; let him lie in it," I told her, all the while hoping he wasn't in it with Helen's knife to his throat.

* * *

I went up to Lester's office, to find him on the phone. 

"I'm so sorry, Colonel, but we have a security situation here and I need all our men back now, regardless of where they are in training. Yes. No. Yes. I'm sure you can find a way for them to complete their courses at a later date. Thank you. I appreciate it very much." Lester clicked his mobile off. "They'll be here in half an hour, by helicopter."

"I'm glad."

"Has Connor found Leek yet?"

"He's tracing the signal. He said it's got an odd encryption but he'll get it."

"Good." Lester was pacing across his office and back, too furious to hold still.

"I've been giving the SFs some of your Kona."

"If you think it'll help, give them all of it. Anything else?"

"I'm told that Gunnery Sergeant Simmons favors the Islay malts."

"When they get Leek for me, I'll buy them the distillery." Lester's blue eyes, normally the gray-blue of northern clouds, were burning brightly. "We're missing something, Cutter."

"I know."

"Leek is too canny to do anything this simple, but we have to follow all the clues."

"Don't overthink it. He might be counting on that."

"True." He sat down at his desk, picked up a pencil, twirled it in his fingers, threw it down and got back up to walk again. "The devil of it is, there's no way to know what he knows."

"He may know more than you think." And I told him about the incursions in my office, the sudden flares of anomalies just beyond camera range, the theft of the goggles, the movement of papers and books, the searches whenever I moved away from my desk. "It can't all be him. There have been people in the ARC that nobody recognizes."

"People? Who?" Lester stopped short. "Show me."

"Connor saw them first, and then Chapman and I found them on the security video." 

Lester tapped his mobile. "Gunnery Sergeant? I'd like to see the security footage for …" He snapped his fingers at me and I gave him the date. "Yes, the things you reviewed with Professor Cutter. He's in my office now. Thank you." He cut the connection. "I'd ask why you didn't tell me before, but – " he tilted his head toward the adjoining office where Leek had sat, day in and day out.

"I was going to invite you to lunch this week."

"I'll take you up on that, later. Ah." The large monitor, quartered, showed four security views that ran to a certain point and stopped. When they stopped, red circles had been superimposed on the image, around unfamiliar faces and around the reflections of anomalies. "Good God. How the dickens do we protect ourselves against that?"

"Chapman is replacing the camera lenses; it's all happening in areas that are just barely out of view." I paused. "Who recommended Leek to you originally?"

Lester shook his head. "The MP from my home district. The recommendation letter said he was invaluable in keeping ahead of official paperwork, and had a keen understanding of facilitation." He picked up his mobile again. "Sir James Lester for Mrs. Cummings, please. Ah, hello Felicity! It's James Lester. Yes, I'm planning to be at the dinner on the seventeenth; looking forward to it. The reason I called was that I was wondering if you've ever heard of someone named Oliver Leek. I have a job application… Hmm. Really? That's very interesting. Thank you so much. I'll look forward to seeing you then." 

"Let me guess." I leaned against the doorframe. "She's never heard of him."

"She said she'd heard the name before, but only in connection with a member of a Welsh Nationalist underground; she thinks it's a pseudonym. She's certainly never employed him." He cocked his head. "More to the point: where's Stephen?"

I sighed. "He quit."

"What?"

"We really need to have had that lunch." I gave him the short version of what had been said between Stephen and myself. "He's certainly under the influence of something besides Helen; he doesn't trust her at all, but now he's defending her."

"If we get him away from her, we'll send him to the infirmary for blood tests immediately. He's far too valuable for us to lose. Yes, corporal?"

The SF who had come up behind me said, "Excuse me, sirs. Mr. Connor has found the source of the signal – and we're all back now, and ready to go at your word."

Lester nodded decisively. "Get ready to go – and I'm coming with you."

* * *

I had to give Lester credit. He was tired of leading from behind and wanted to be in the front of the charge for a change, despite the evident danger to himself. A squad of SFs, while at least as deadly as a mammoth, might not be the right protection for him when dealing with Leek.

But he wouldn't let the rest of us come along, which annoyed me no end. I'd nearly been blown up by Leek's bomb; I wanted to see this through. 

Leek wasn't a top-down man; he was adept at manipulation. This had to be more of it. But Lester was adamant – and he was the boss.

When it turned out to be a false alarm, his call back to the ARC was too late to reach the rest of us. We'd already left, following the signal that Connor had connected to his ex-girlfriend Caroline's mobile, to do what we could to recover Rex from her.


	7. Into the underworld

Given time, I could probably relate everything that happened the rest of this long day, but I have spent so much effort trying to forget parts of it that I will only speak of what I can bear to tell again.

As we waited for word from them, Connor pulled a phone from his pocket and dashed over to the array of computers. "I can track Caroline's mobile, to get Rex back." Abby said something about illegal use of government property, but he was already on the job. In seconds he'd found the location of her phone, and headed for the door to go after her. Abby paced him.

"I'll go with you," I called. "Lester said we couldn't go with him; he didn't say we had to stay here." And Jenny, reluctantly, came along as well.

We took the one Rover, and followed the signal to a warehouse district whose buildings sported broken windows and grass growing between sections of concrete paving. This didn't seem to me the kind of place an uptown girl would choose to go, and Abby's and Jenny's comments agreed with me. The whole location looked suspiciously like the set for a low-budget horror movie.

I opened the door, and we went in, slowly. Only a few steps inside, in a darkened room, Connor found Caroline's bag, with her mobile, lying on the floor as if tossed aside. It looked like an expensive bag, even with the dirt from the uncleaned floor on it. Abby glared at the bag, but her mouth was set in a straight line as she passed it.

We walked slowly down the dirty hallway. I kept thinking I could smell something that didn't belong in that building, but I was too busy looking for traps to concentrate on it. In another time and place, another Stephen had taught me how to widen my visual field in times of danger, rather than allow it to constrict with panic, and I was trying my best to follow his instructions as we moved through the dark passageways.

And then we went through the door in the dark, and the light switched on. This time, we were surrounded by gunmen, some of them the fake SFs from the surveillance footage. I saw Connor's eyes widen at this, but he said nothing.

"I wondered who was going to come, and I was hoping it would be you," Leek said, emerging from the crowd, a smug-faced lizard among the bears.

Someone clubbed me down, and I went into the darkness.

* * *

Oddly enough, while I was out cold, I could hear Gram's voice, singing her old version of Thomas the Rhymer's song:

_…I am the queen of fair Elfland,  
And I have come to visit thee."  
"You must go with me Thomas," she said,  
True Thomas you must go with me --_

No, I tried to tell Gram, it's not the Queen of Elfland who has me in thrall. It's Helen, the Helen who never launched ships except to sink them for her own amusement. I have to get free…

And someone kissed me, someone who tasted of the tea Stephen stocked that his mum sent him especially from home, because he liked it better than what he could find in the city.

I opened my eyes into red light from emergency bulbs, and saw Helen kneeling over me, caressing my face. I put my hand up to hers, mostly to determine whether she was an hallucination or reality. I was having trouble focusing my eyes.

"I'm sorry," she murmured. "I told him not to hurt you."

"Helen." I breathed carefully, still smelling that odd scent. It was all around us, and so were other ones that I'd smelled before. The back of my neck hurt like the devil where I'd been hit, and the headache from it promised to be worse when I moved. "You're behind this."

Out of the darkness stepped Leek, behind her. "Please, give a little credit where it's due."

The blare of floodlights full on my face felt like lightning through my brain – but the growls from only a few meters away had me on my feet in an instant.

Electronic cages surrounded us, full of the creatures we had thought dead, the ones we had tried to return, the ones we had encountered on the other side of the anomalies for more than a year. There was a sad-faced mer, lying on the concrete, its skin cracking with dryness. Nearby, sniffing the air and grumbling to themselves, two raptors flicked their feathers at each other in a cage too small for them both. A sabre-toothed cat stalked in a third cage, its growls the sound that had awakened me. The giant centipede that had bitten Stephen was there, as was the monstrous Silurian scorpion. Far to the back stood a Scutasaurus the size of a tank, and what appeared to be its young. I couldn't imagine Leek having the wit to breed anything, so it must have just been accidental, him finding two of the same thing.

The cage floors were too clean; they couldn't have been there long. Leek had to have been keeping the animals somewhere else, and set this up just for us, like his careful movement of staff and SFs away from the ARC to isolate Lester for the kill.

Leek allowed us to move between the cages, gloating as we saw all of his collection. As we did, Abby found Rex, the only creature in an outsized cage of his own, but the electric bars sparked as she tried to free him, and hurt them both.  
A buzzer sounded, and food dropped through tubes from the ceiling, into each cage – meat for the carnivores, fish for the mer, other things I didn't see for the invertebrates and Rex. 

At least he wasn't turning them on each other. Yet.

At that point, Leek separated into small groups and shut into little concrete rooms, human holding cells. Mine was shared with Jenny, who would not shut up. It was an effort to hold my head up or lean against the cold walls and floor, and the headache throbbed. At least the light was dimmer.

It was clear to me that they'd only put us in a place they had under surveillance – Leek had obviously been planning this for months – but Jenny kept asking questions as if we were out on a cruise in the midst of the Irish sea, with no microphone for miles.

"What are Leek and Helen up to? All those creatures!" She stalked the room, too much like the sabre-toothed cat for my liking. "What are they going to do with them?"

"Well, I can guess, but what's the point?" I kept my voice low, and hoped I sounded reassuring. "It's going to be okay. Helen's not interested in you."

Stephen had always said I was no good at lying. I was betting my life, maybe all our lives, on the chance that for once he was wrong about a matter of survival.

"She's your wife; you should have kept her under control." She caught my amused snort. "You know what I mean."

"I hope your fiancé knows you're such an old-fashioned girl." Sure, give me straight lines like that, Jenny.

She leaned against the wall, her tension coiled. "For your information, I don't have a fiancé any more."

"Why?" I was honestly surprised. "What happened?"

"This job. He thought I'd met someone else." She bit her lip. "I couldn't very well tell him it wasn't another man, so much as a something-a-saurus. Look, can we talk about this another time? It's not like we haven't got anything else to worry about. Imminent death, for example."

Ah. Back to work. "It's okay. We're not gonna die. Helen's a lot of things, but she's not a killer." I hoped I sounded convincing.

"You really think she's in charge here."

"Yeah. Leek doesn't have the wit to do this sort of thing…"

I tried to keep my thoughts on the present. Obviously, I had some value for Helen, and she must have had enough control over Leek and their militia to make sure I was still in one piece. But Helen had never had any regard for Connor or Abby, from what Stephen had said about the time she'd spent here. Had she simply disposed of them, or put them into another little concrete box like this one? 

All I could hope was that my measured words had reached her, and that I might still have enough influence with her to save their lives. I had few illusions about how long I'd live if Leek got me away from her, and I wasn't at my best to start with.

True Thomas could escape from the Underworld, but nowhere in the legends did he have friends there as well, whom he'd have to choose to save or leave behind. But I was no True Thomas, and there was no choice in the matter. If they weren't coming out, neither was I, though I hoped to live long enough to see Leek go down for what he'd done.

"Helen will have her own agenda; she always does."

"Lester says she's mad."

"No. She's extraordinary."

"Extraordinary! She tried to kill you."

"No, no, no, no, that was Leek."

And I continued to pretend to be the voice of reason.

"God." Jenny looked on me with disbelief and pity, flavored with anger and fear. "Anyone would thing you're still in love with the woman."

And I sold my life and the lives of my friends for the biggest lie of my life.

"Yep. Probably am." As Jenny watched, disbelieving, I continued, "It's not so much to do with love or hate any more. It goes deeper than that. We shared something unique…"

Well, that much was true, if you considered kidnapping, abandonment and the seduction of my best friend. I'd have to say, I'd hope that wouldn't be a common experience.

* * *

After an hour, they came for us and took us to a machine room, where Helen was waiting – but her attention was on Jenny, not me. She reached out to touch Jenny's face, as if Jenny were a taxidermied creature ready for exhibit.

"Fascinating. The same as Claudia in every external detail – eyes, hair – in all visible ways she's the same woman, but completely different."

"Back off." Jenny stood her ground, shrugging away from Helen's touch. Jenny's expression was the one she wore for evaluating new threats, but she didn't look overwhelmed or frightened, which was the good thing.

Helen drew her hand back and flirted, tracing the line of her own collarbone. "A little more aggressive, perhaps, than the original. Claudia Brown becomes Jenny Lewis, a person with a new identity. Interesting. As if nature allows only so much variation."

Jenny tried to turn Helen with an argument I knew was doomed to failure–"save us and I'll make sure Lester goes easy on you" – but Helen didn't buy it. 

"I think you'll be happier with your friends." And Helen waved to a militiaman to take her away. I nodded to her, hoping to look reassuring, as she left.

Her friends. The others were still alive at that point. Good.

"Nick – you're with me."

"Where are they taking Jenny?" I followed her through the lines of equipment, past the steaming pipes.

"Oh, she's quite safe. So are the others."

Did she actually know this or was it another little lie? I had to hope that, for once, she was truthful.

"So? What's all this about?"

"A fresh start, Nick. A new and better future." And Helen started to tell me her plans for the future: wipe this reality clean and start over. "Your friend Jenny proves that if we can control the anomalies, we can make it happen again. Doesn't that excite you?"

"No." I stood face to face with her. "I don't want to change the world, Helen. I think it's rather beautiful the way it is. You know what happens when we interfere – what damage we can cause."

"You can't damage the future, Nick. We can only alter it."

And one of those damned future predators jerked its face close to mine through the doorway we stood near, and sniffed me.

That was what I'd smelled, all this time.

It had its red little pillbox controller on its head, looking for all the world like the bellhop from a hotel in a horror movie, restraining it until Leek decided otherwise.

And Helen was smiling at me, as calm as if she were serving tea to the vicar.

"You gave the neural clamp technology to Leek, and you found it in the future." I concentrated on breathing and staying calm. The predator scent was strong, but I could smell fear on myself and I knew that scent had to be flooding the predator's nostrils, marking me as a target, a meal.

Helen had not turned a hair. Her gaze became more direct. "I discovered a lot of things. You can, too, if you want." And she led me onward, leaving the crippled monster in its doorway, sniffing behind us.

Gram's voice echoed in my mind again.  
 _'…but the Fey are not like you and me, Nicky-lad,' Gram said. 'They don't have all the human emotions. They have desire but not love, distaste but not the fire of hate, and their lives are so long they don't comprehend us at all, no more than we comprehend the ants on the sidewalk…'_

* * *

Helen led me up a flight of stairs to a half-darkened room with panels of computer controls that I couldn't read.

"If it's me you want, then why not let the others go?" I asked her. 

She ignored my words as if I hadn't spoken, as if I had only commented on her previous statements. "The last time the world changed, it was an accident. But we can repeat that accident as an experiment under controlled conditions."

"What you want to do is you want to change the present just to see what would happen in the future?"

Her smile widened. "I knew you'd understand."

"What happens if you destroy the human race during this experiment."

She laughed. "Then we bring it back again. I think this is why the anomalies first appeared, Nick – so that we can help create the future."

"No." I tried to appeal to the scientist I had known so long ago, to the woman whom I'd shared a bed and a life with in another world. "Everything in nature is the result of random selection, and if we start to disrupt that perfect balance, then life begins to unravel."

"I disagree." She started to tell me why when Leek reappeared and demanded what I was doing there.

"Well, never mind. I wanted him to see this anyway." He passed me and switched on a rack of computer monitors. "Give away our location, and your friends die." 

Lester's face appeared onscreen. "Cutter?"

"Cutter's here with me, and so are the others. They're fine, for now."

"It's only a matter of time before we track you down." Lester's calm arrogance felt comforting, for once, especially since it wasn't aimed at me. 

"Listen to me –" Leek cut through Lester's words. "An hour ago I released a Silurean-era scorpion into a well-known holiday resort. I can tell from your face that it has already made an impact. I've positioned another dozen creatures in similar locations."

Lester sat back in his chair. "Go on."

"Call off the search. I shall let them go one by one."

"What is it that you really want, Leek? Is it money?"

"I'll be in touch." 

"What about the scorpion?"

"That's your problem." Leek cut the signal.

I had kept my silence, but I couldn't keep it in any longer. "Money! Is this what it's all about?" I demanded of Leek.

"The anomalies are unstoppable now, and in the future money will not mean very much, but knowledge and power will, and I intend to be very, very powerful."

Slimy little garden lizard, thinking he'd become a tyrannosaurus. Thinking that Helen would let him.

"You knew all of this and still you help him?" I asked Helen. 

She demurred. "I need the right environment in which to conduct my research."

Leek leaned forward and pressed buttons on a panel. In the room below, alarms went off, floor lights came on, and Connor, Abby, Jenny and a girl who had to be Connor's lizard-stealing ex-girlfriend stood in the center, their backs to one another in a defensive position. He peered at the monitors, tracking their movements, watching the progress of the fear over their faces. 

I had to distract him. I walked away from the monitors. "I have to give you credit, Oliver, you're a lot smarter than I gave you credit for."

"I know," Leek said calmly.

"When did you figure out that we'd rigged the anomaly detector?"

He looked up, slightly off-balance for the first time. "It wasn't difficult to see you'd found my spyware. All I needed to do was upload the modification from my laptop. Simple, really."

"I never saw that coming." 

"If you think that paying me compliments is going to buy your friends more time, you're mistaken." He pressed a few keys. "I think the Americans call it 'dinner theatre'." Leek's face held only contempt as he laughed. "I'll just upload everything from my laptop."

The sabre-toothed cat, the one that had been hand-raised from kittenhood only to kill its rescuer, stepped through the steam and into the room below. It prowled beyond the second set of floor lights, its eyes never leaving the small crowd of humans.

Leek focused on the scene below as if it were a play staged only for him, never mind the life or death of the actors in the lights.

"Stop this!" I demanded. I turned to Helen. "Stop this now" She had never been one for this sort of conscious cruelty. I remembered the time we'd visited the Coliseum, on a holiday in Rome, and her distaste for the guides' crude jokes about its victims.

She glared at Leek, her voice flat. "You've had your nasty little joke. Stop it." 

"Who said anything about a joke?" Leek replied, irked. He pointed at Helen. "You do not give me orders! No one does!"

I could hear the growls from the floor. The cat was prowling, closer to the small group of humans. Connor's ex hung back from the others, but Abby pulled her back into the safety of the crowd.

"Cutter will save us," Connor said, his face tight.

"He'd better do something soon." Jenny looked equally tense. Their voices echoed from the concrete walls.

Behind them, Abby had separated herself, stepping away from the others to become the bait. "I know this creature." She stood straight, but had her head angled down to stare threateningly at the sabre-toothed cat, as an equal. "It's the one that killed Valerie. It has to decide if I'm dangerous."

"Then what?" Jenny's whisper echoed from the concrete walls.

"Then it eats me."

I felt a wave of cold go through me at her words.

Leek's laptop was next to my hand, unattached. 

I couldn't watch the rack of monitors, all tuned to the same horrible scene. I had to trust that Abby, who knew animals, had a plan. Instead, I grabbed a half-glass of water that stood nearby and spilled it onto the main keyboard. One of Leek's thugs grabbed me and pulled me back into a secure hold. I held my breath, hoping that Leek thought I had been demoralized, and waited as he connected the laptop to take its place.

And the security alarms rang out like insane church chimes as the software that Connor had created and uploaded hours earlier began to strip all the software and data from Leek's systems and upload it to the ARC.

Abby had circled, backing up, until she was nearly facing away from the others. At the sound of the alarms, the sabre-tooth charged and she dodged aside. The cat couldn't stop and hit the open electrical wires in the wall full on, screamed with the burn, shook its head and ran away through the gap under the opening sliding door. Abby ran to join the others and they escaped the room through a different door, safe for now.

I broke free from the hold and grabbed the guard's gun. Helen attacked him, kicking him down and stomping him. Leek ran away through the now-open side door.

And all the while the alarms kept screaming: Warning! Warning! Animal Containment Facility Offline!

How long would it take before all the creatures were loose to roam the countryside, wreaking havoc?

The guard tried to come after me; Helen kicked him down and turned to me, victorious, certain that we were just fine, partners again after so long – as if nothing else mattered, the displaced and tortured creatures, my friends in peril, the lives of those who would be killed by the creatures when they were loose.

"Warning! Animal containment facility offline! Warning! Animal containment facility offline!"

And Helen was laughing. "You see, we still make a good team."

It was all I could do to restrict my response to words, rather than use the gun in my hands, the rifle I'd grabbed from the guard. "We're not a team. I'm handing you over to Lester."

"No, you won't do that." She moved toward me as if we were in a bedroom with the sheets ready for us. "I heard what you said in the room. I know you still love me."

Time for the ice-cold water. "Don't flatter yourself. I said exactly what you wanted to hear."

Her eyes narrowed. "You knew the cell was bugged."

"I thought it might be Leek's style, so I put on a little performance, just in case."

She tried to shake it off. "I don't believe you."

I was done with listening to her. "I don't care. Now, get in front of me before I shoot you."

She sidled away in front of me, turning to face me as she backed toward the darkness. "I don't think you'll do that."

It was exactly the wrong time for the guard she'd knocked down to come back to life and try to shoot me. When I'd knocked him out with the rifle butt, she was gone.

* * *

Gram's stories had never said enough about how to escape from the underworld, except by climbing. I found the nearest stairs, fortunately a flight whose hatch cover at the top was already open, and started climbing warily. 

It was just as well that I'd put on trainers that morning, dulling the sound of my footsteps on the metal treads; when I raised my head barely above the level of the next floor, it was to see the curved foreclaw of a raptor tapping on the grid, as big as my head and a meter away, as the creature paused to determine direction. I froze, eyes open, barely breathing, and it flicked its feathers in an annoyed sort of way and moved past me, lightfooted, hissing like the steam leaking from the pipes. 

Great. Silent killers on the loose in the underworld. No map of the place, no directions, only the sense of upward to guide me. The rifle was semi-automatic; thanks to Gunnery Sergeant Simmons I had a reasonable expectation of being able to fire it in a general direction and hit something, though probably not what I aimed at.

How could I find my friends and get them out of there?

* * *

I was back in the red-light zone, in an open area where more stairs rose at the side to the height of the ceiling, up in the darkness. Where I stood, under the landing at the next level, I couldn't see what lay ahead of me in the darkness, but I'd have to cross that space to keep going. I took a few slow steps away from the overhang.

And heard the chittering of a future predator, and the sound of its claws on the metal stair treads. Probably hanging upside down, as they preferred. I didn't need to turn around to know it was there; I could smell it. It was an odd scent, dusty, rank, both animal and human, overtones of primate sweat jarringly familiar but altered by something insectoid, something reptilian, something else I couldn't or didn't want to identify.

I had to get moving before it hit the floor. I crouched, dodged, dashed to the side wall near the electrical junction box and stared into the darkness, hoping the gun was loaded with enough ammunition to bring it down. Lester must have hit the one at the ARC twenty times when he was shooting at it, and it still would have killed him if the mammoth had not dealt with it. But I had no _pachyderm ex machina_ to save me here.

I would have to save myself, somehow.

I wasn't in full darkness, but that wouldn't matter with these creatures, who hunted by sound and scent rather than sight. I heard it start to track me and I ran – and slammed hard into a wall in the dark, dropping the gun as I fell.

The fall had knocked the wind out of me. I gasped, dragged myself up, found the gun, and moved away from the wall where I'd have some maneuvering space, at least. 

The creature chittered overhead; good. It had not yet come down, but was still trying to find me.

When what you hear is worth your life, you listen.

And the headache that had come from being struck down – how long ago? It seemed like days – roared back into full force. 

I opened my eyes. "I've had enough of this." That was not just for the predator, but for Helen and Leek and their militia, for everyone who wanted to destroy the innocent and beautiful in order to recreate the world in their ugly images.

And I opened fire with the automatic rifle, spraying lead in short bursts toward the high stairs and the girders where the creature lurked.

It gave me enough cover to find my way out into the red-lit passages again, spraying bursts ahead of me just in case something might show up because I was certain by now that any thing that did appear ahead of me would not be friendly.

As I ran I looked for an exit, for another staircase to go up that went in a different direction, for any sign of Abby or Jenny or Connor or his ex, but I was alone in the underworld.

And I was starting to get tired.

On the next level I reached the arena where Abby had faced down the sabre-toothed cat. It was lit from below, spotlights blaring toward the shadowed heights, bracketed by steam pipes and junction boxes, with the control room's windows one level up surveying it all.

My breathing seemed to echo in the space, and I tried to slow my heartbeat, but I heard the click behind me and it raced. I turned slowly, the rifle dropping to my side and then to the floor, because death was eight meters away, as tall as I was, clicking, knuckling closer, three meters, death in its red pillbox hat waiting to conduct me onward to a worse underworld than this, one from which there was no escape, no recourse, no refuge. Shooting at it from this distance was useless; its reflexes were lightning fast, and it was intelligent and just as likely to turn the gun on me as to rip me to shreds with needle teeth and vicious claws.

We stood, regarding one another for a long moment, each in our own thoughts. I couldn't get my eyes off the red neural controller on its head.

It came closer, opened its mouth to show me all its teeth, and tilted its head, smelling the blood on my left hand.

And I ripped the red pillbox and the wires off its bare skull with my right hand and stepped out of the way.

It died long and hard, with as much theatrics as any scene-chewing RADA trainee.

Leek stepped into the light, clapping his hands, applauding what he undoubtedly saw as his own private entertainment. It was just as well for him that I didn't have the gun in hand at that point; he would have gone down too, right beside his creature.

"That's really a design fault." Leek took his laptop from under his arm and held it casually. "I'll have to correct that in the others."

"What others?" But before he pointed, I heard them. They had been still, watching the drama below, but now they moved on the girders, on the stairs, a dozen or more of them, more than I could ever hope to survive.

"My own Praetorian Guard." Leek was preening in front of me. I wondered how long he'd planned this, how long he'd groomed and cultivated this contempt and disdain for humanity while he sat in the office next to Lester. How long had he hated us all?

Or was hatred too human a word to use?

"They're no more dangerous than a car or an airplane; they're a machine designed for human use," he said, as if describing the latest modification in a Ferrari.

The smell from above filtered down around us, along with the smell of death next to us. For all the effort spent to ventilate that building, it wasn't working too well.

"You know that's not how it's going to work, Oliver. One day they're going to escape, and they're going to kill all of us." I focused all my attention on him. "It's the end of the human race you're looking at."

He faked a cringe backward, ridiculing me, laughing at the thought of the death of the planet, and I knew he'd left the concept of humanity behind a long time ago, along with sanity or anything but greed for power. Was this what Romans had felt when facing the mad Caligula? 

"In a few minutes the computer will have eliminated the virus." Leek shrugged. "Unfortunately, your friends have escaped, but I still have you."

A rush of joy pushed back the headache and the weariness, though I didn't have trouble hiding it. They were free, and as soon as they were above ground they would have contacted Lester. Help was on the way. All I had to do for now was stay alive a little longer.

Leek turned away from me, fearless, to contact Lester for himself on his laptop. Lester listened to Leek's threats, and said, "Oh, didn't Cutter tell you? That clever little virus of his sent us the contest of your hard disk. Names, locations, all sorts of useful stuff. We're just mopping up the last of your menagerie now." Behind Lester, the woman who had been promoted to replace Leek smiled. "And Jenny just phoned. You have a few minutes before we join you. Now if you don't mind, there's some snooker on the other channel."

I could not help smiling. When I got out, I was going to buy Sir James Lester any drink he wanted, even if it was a bottle of something that would cost an entire paycheck.

"Have you ever seen a man torn apart on live tv, Lester?" Leek snarled at the laptop.

Lester's face froze as he saw me standing behind Leek; god knows what I looked like to him but I knew from his expression that he was suddenly furious, though it showed only in the small lines around his eyes and the stillness of his mouth. His assistant gasped.

"Call off your men, or I shall order the creatures to dismantle Professor Cutter, joint by joint."

"The government does not negotiate with hostage takers." Lester let his anger show.

"Thirty seconds," Leek taunted him. "Then they kill him. Your choice."

"Don't do it, James." I shouted over Leek, who had begun his countdown. "I'm not important."

When there is only one action left in your life, it has to be the right one. As Leek counted down disdainfully, I sprinted to the side of the room and slammed the red neural disruptor in my hand into the junction box, shorting out the wiring to the accompaniment of a shower of sparks – and the pained cries of all the predators in the rafters, suddenly freed from Leek's control. 

"What have you done?" Leek said, stupefied.

The shock shoved me back, but I stumbled and ran for the door.

And shut it behind me.

And kept going.

The screams didn't last long.

* * *

I went up another flight of stairs and found a place in the shadows to sit and have the shakes. I'd escaped from Leek and his creatures, but I hadn't finished the gauntlet he'd stupidly set up. It would be a long way to the surface from here, another three flights or more, and who knew what I'd find on them – and I was unarmed. 

I'd just have to persuade some other thug to give me his rifle, somehow.

When I stopped shaking.

Human voices echoed off the concrete and steel around and over me, moving on the next level. It was Stephen, arguing with Helen. When he saw me he froze. So did Helen, ahead of him; it was plain that she hadn't expected to see me alive again, and didn't care if I was. She was pinning all her hopes on Stephen now.

Stephen blinked, shook his head slightly in that way he had of shaking off sleep or drowsiness, that way he had of becoming sober instantly in an emergency. I'd seen him do it a thousand times. It told me that whatever she'd drugged him with was gone.

"You said he was dead."

Helen started to sidle into the shadows.

"What have you done?" It was barely a breath from him, but it cut like a saber.

Whatever lies she'd told him, whatever drug-aided tales she'd spun to get him on her side, I was apparently the proof that they were false. 

"Don't tell me you're in this," I said, half to test him.

"Oh, I've never seen this place before in my life." That was my Stephen, coming to his senses, blazing with anger, looking for somewhere to put it. 

"Lester brought me here!" she told Stephen, while sidling away, a clear tell.

"Ask her, go on, ask her," I goaded him. "Ask her what she wanted to do. Go on, ask her about Leek, ask her about how many people were going to die—"

"He's trying to trick you." Helen's eyes were on me, but her soft words were for Stephen.

"I so badly wanted to believe in you." Stephen stared at her as he held the railing with both hands, leaning on it as if it anchored his sanity, then he rounded on me. "But that doesn't put you in the right."

"Stephen, there's a whole army of predators here." It came out as a hoarse shout in the enclosed space. "If any of them make it above ground, there's going to be nobody left. Now, if you want to help people, we have to do this."

"There's nothing we can do." That was Helen; create disaster, and back away.

"Then you're going to have to think of something or we're all gonna die." I stood, tired of holding still, with energy for one more burst of action. "You brought them here, you know them."

We waited while Helen thought. It must have been only a few seconds. It felt like an hour. The irony of waiting for rescue from her, now, burned.

"The siren," she said at last. "The creatures associate the sound with their food. They'll come back to the cage room whenever it sounds."

I moved toward them. "If we can lock them in with the predators, they'll destroy each other."

And we went back into the depths of the underworld, the castle keep of Leek's nightmare kingdom, one last time.

* * *

We stayed together, though the mistrust among us was palpable. Better to escape and then sort it out, I thought, and saw the same understanding in Stephen's eyes. The control panel hung from a cable in the middle of the room. As soon as I pressed the red button and the siren sounded, we could hear the racing footsteps coming toward us, through the multiple doors into the room. We had to get out before they arrived. 

"I'll seal the door. Nothing will get out." Helen slammed the emergency door lock with her fist as she passed the wall. A raptor, the first creature to reach the room, darted after her, caught her foot in its teeth and pulled her back.

She yelled and fought, I grabbed her to brace her against the pull, Stephen did the same, but half the battle was against the iron door trying to cut her in half. I kicked the lock control on the side we were on, to stop the door, and at the last second Stephen pulled a pistol and shot the raptor twice, killing it.

But the door was still open, and the creatures were coming. They would be willing to fight one another only for so long, with the smell of blood in the air. Soon they would come for us. The control box that I had kicked hung crooked on the wall; pressing the buttons did nothing now.

"The only way to shut it now is from inside," Helen said, her eyes darting from Stephen to me. "Whoever does it will be locked in."

"Then one of us has got to go back in." My burst of energy was deserting me. I was panting with exhaustion.

We all looked at each other, none of us moving.

Surely, if the animals came on so quickly, their hunger as fierce as their growls from the short rations Leek had kept them on – surely, it had to be quick. Not painless, but quick. I could stand a fast death, if it kept others alive, even Helen. And Stephen, alive, sober, could testify to Lester about what Helen had told him.

I moved toward the door with the last of the strength I had, only to be bowled down by Stephen's hard left hook as he went past me, as he pulled the door shut between us.

Shutting me out, with Helen.

And himself inside.

I can't remember what I yelled. I know Stephen said goodbye to me, and sent his love to Abby and Connor. I watched as long as I could, screaming until my throat was raw, as he backed away from the door, his eyes full of steadiness and love, not letting the fear of what would come keep him from this last long look.

He lifted his chin ever so slightly.

A large dark shape came between us, and he cried out. I couldn't watch any more. It seemed, as I fell apart trying not to listen and unable to stop, that the world brightened for a moment as Stephen's soul passed through the door on its way to paradise, but I was weeping so hard that anything could have happened.

Helen was long gone before they found me. And when I awoke, in the ARC's infirmary, with IVs plugged into me and my wounds bandaged, I closed my eyes again and gave myself to the darkness.


	8. To arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time

When I came to, Abby sat next to me, holding my hand. She was wiping her eyes with a fine cloth handkerchief. I squeezed her fingers to get her to look up.

"You're all right?" I croaked. Evidently, the IV meant to stave off dehydration and exhaustion did not help my throat in the slightest. Abby disentangled her fingers long enough to get me a drink from the glass and pitcher at the side table.

"We're fine, all of us. Rex was hurt, but he'll be okay." 

"The creatures –"

She drew a breath. "Lester called somebody, told them that he needed to utterly destroy part of a warehouse district because of … I didn't hear what. But on the news they said there was an evacuation ordered for five miles around that area on the basis of a volatile chemical spill. Lester had the Air Force drop a bomb on the building. It's not there any more." She took a breath. "Nothing is."

"Stephen's …"

She nodded once. 

"The SFs caught Helen at the tree where we found her old stash, near two of the predictable anomalies. She killed one of the SFs with her knife before they subdued her." Abby breathed again. "She told us both of you were dead, but we'd already found you. There … wasn't anything left in the cage room."

"I'm … sorry."

"Don't you be sorry!" she flared up at me. "You've done nothing wrong. You did everything you could, Cutter. None of this is your fault. None of it." And she burst into tears.

"Here, now, give over, lass." I found the control for the bed and pushed it so I was sitting up, and gathered her into my one good arm, and felt her tears soak my shoulder, just as mine were soaking her hair.

* * *

Connor showed up a bit later, while I was staring at the ceiling after Abby left. He sat in the chair where Abby had been, and said. "There was an anomaly in the building; it opened into the cage room."

"When?"

"After we left. You were still probably there. It wasn't open for more than a few seconds."

It hurt to shrug but I did it anyway. "Probably how Leek dealt with some of the animals: herd them into a timed anomaly and bring them out again after. He didn't have room to house them all in that building. He probably jimmied the detectors to hide it." My mind felt like mud, but a few things bobbed in the muck. "Listen, Connor, I have something for you to do."

"Sure thing." He watched me steadily, and I was struck again by how much more mature he was than the Connor Temple in my old life, who had bounced and bumbled into and out of disasters. But by now perhaps that one had grown up as well.

"Go to Stephen's apartment, gather up all the towels, any clothes that are on the floor, any old substances, anything at all that looks out of place, and bring it back here, to the labs. I know Helen was drugging Stephen –" oh, the effort to say his name and not break down. "I don't know what she used. She used to break into his place and stay there without his permission; she may have hidden a stash. Take some of the SFs with you. And tell Lester."

"Tell Lester what?" The man himself stood in the doorway.

"I'm pretty sure that Helen was drugging Stephen, and if she had a stash it was at his place. I want Connor to search along with the SFs; he's more familiar with it."

"Right, because Stephen let you stay there when you had the flu that time." Lester said as he took out his mobile. "Sergeant, we need several SFs to conduct a search of Mr. Hart's apartment under the guidance of Mr. Temple, immediately. All permeable cloth – towels, clothing, the like – is to be brought back here and tested for unknown substances, and every bottle, jar or other container brought back as well. And every surface is to be wiped down and the cloth used for that brought back as well. Thank you."

Connor stood, watching me. "I'll be back."

"I know you will." I tried to smile for him; it didn't work, but the effort showed, I think.

Lester sat down on the chair beside the bed. "Nick, I am more sorry than I have words." There were new lines on his face, and silver at the temples that I hadn't noticed before. 

"You did the right thing, not kowtowing to Leek. As for the rest…"

We were both silent for a while. 

"We have Helen Cutter," he said at length.

I nodded.

"Do you want any say in what happens to her?"

"No." I closed my eyes for a long moment, but I could only see the pale blue paint on the wrong side of that door that had Stephen on the other side, and the red-framed porthole in it, so I opened them again. "Yes and no. She's not my wife any more; I had her declared legally dead … before, where I came from. Just don't let her be declared too crazy for prison."

"She won't go to prison. She knifed one of the SF's in the heart; it's a capital offense. But, since she doesn't legally exist here any more either…" Lester looked away and then back at me. "Let's just say that I've spoken to the proper authorities and none have objections to what will happen."

"Fine. Don't tell me. I just don't want to have to see her ever again. She left--"

Lester handed me a handkerchief, and gave me time to collect myself. He settled back in the chair, folded his hands and stared off into the corner of the room. After a bit, he said, "What I came here to talk about was something else, a few things, actually."

I tried to gather my wits. The medical staff had given me the good painkillers, and would soon be trying to wean me off them, but for now my concentration was nowhere near what it should be.

"First, is there anything I can do for you?"

"Anything?" I must have misheard him. "You could do for me?"

"Time off at a resort, or travel, or whatever you might like as a break from this place. I can't possibly know how hard this all is for you, but I want to make it easier. And the same goes for Abby and Connor as well." He studied me, the lines between his eyebrows tenting with concern. "Perhaps a life membership in the Explorers Club? Or, if you no longer want to work at the ARC, we could find you a teaching position at Oxford or Cambridge? Or St. Andrews, or anywhere else? Otago, in New Zealand, might be far enough away; you could telecommute. What do you think?"

"That's … very generous of you. Though I rather think I already have a life membership in the Explorers Club, whether they know it or not. Can I get back to you on the rest?"

"Of course. Also, you should be up and around in time for the funeral, if you wish to go." His face clouded. 

"What will you say to his family?"

"They knew he was working for us, and that the work was difficult and dangerous. I'll find some inadequate thing to say." He turned away from me to survey the room. "You need a window in here so that there's something to stare out. It must be terribly boring for you."

"I could do with a view, but I don't think I'll be here that long, all things told." I struggled with the thought of the funeral. It would have to be an empty box, perhaps weighted down with some of the rubble from the site, wrapped in a blanket to keep it from rattling. After what had happened, there wasn't even a shoelace left. "I'll be there at the funeral, even though I can't say a thing to his parents, except sorry."

"Can I get you anything at the moment? I understand you'll be here for another day or two."

"Something to read? And tell me what they find at the apartment."

"I will." Lester rose to go. 

"James." It was barely a sound but Lester turned back. "Tell them not to let Helen keep a stitch of her own clothes, nothing at all. She can turn anything into a weapon."

He nodded. "Anything else?"

"We need to have our own wake for Stephen, in the back room at the Crow and Garter. We all used to go there."

The wheels were visibly turning behind Lester's eyes. "I'll take care of it. We can go after the… um. Yes." 

"What about the family?" I wasn't thinking clearly enough at all. "Could they be, um, read in enough to see some of the reports, hear a story or two? Maybe they could sign something?"

"It's a thought, certainly. I'll get Barbara to look up precedents." Lester managed a faint smile at the corner of his mouth. "It makes such a difference to have a friendly person in that next office. My back is unknotting for the first time in months."

* * *

The Toxicology Department couldn't identify the liquid in the little vial that had been hidden in the frame of a light fixture. Neither could Chemistry or Biology, though they could determine some of its traits. When a senior scientist accidentally spilled a little on his hand in the presence of the newest member of the department, and proceeded to follow her around all day and agree what whatever she said, the effects were made clear. But the source of the substance wasn't determined until a Botany researcher noticed that she felt far more relaxed and agreeable – despite a fight with her boyfriend and a raging headache -- after repotting a succulent grown from a seed from Abby's boot treads. 

We wouldn't have to worry about it getting loose; they'd had a hard enough time growing it from seed, since it seemed to require a different nutrient mix in the soil than anywhere common to the planet now. The plant itself was taken from the greenhouse and moved to a spot on Lester's desk, where, he said, he could keep an eye on it, and perhaps throw bits of it at obstinate visitors. It looked enough like a jade plant to make its presence innocuous.

After further testing, though, the clear liquid in the vial was destroyed. Since it made people so suggestible, without the ability to tell truth from lies, it would be useless for interrogation, and it was too dangerous to retain.

Or so Abby and Connor told me when they came to pick me up and take me home.

* * *

Abby had had my good suit cleaned and pressed, or perhaps it was Barbara, assigned to take care of loose ends. Whoever it was, I was grateful for the attention. I would not have been able to deal with it myself; I still found myself burbling up at the worst times.

Stephen's mother and father had greeted me with kindness and recalled when I came to Scotland for their daughter's funeral. I said I remembered them, and murmured something about wishing I'd renewed the acquaintance under happier circumstances.

"Professor, please. Consider yourself welcome to come any time, you and your friends. We would love to have you visit." Mrs. Hart pressed my hand. She wore the sort of calm within grief that comes from steely strength, and she looked at me with Stephen's blue gaze. 

"I almost expected you'd want to do this up in Scotland, no?" I said.

She shook her head. "If things were otherwise, of course. But … it's an empty coffin, aye? We'll raise a stone for him back there, too." She glanced at Abby and Connor, who were talking with Stephen's brother and father. "I know you can't talk about what happened, but anything you can say…"

I swallowed hard, and let the emotions come. "Stephen was the finest friend I ever had. He died saving my life; he saved all of us."

Neither of us said anything while the sounds of other voices murmured around us.

Her voice was soft when it came. "Come back with us, Professor, afterward, for a time. We would so love to know you better."

I drew a slow breath, feeling the idea settle into my body. "Thank you. I'll have to see what arrangements can be made here, first, of course…"

"Of course." 

"It's time, my dear," Mr. Hart said, touching her elbow. "Professor."

I glanced across the room, collecting the team with my eyes: Connor and Abby, together. Lester, on the other side of the room near to the door, with Jenny. Gunnery Sergeant Simmons and Cpl. Chapman, in dress uniform, not as an honor guard but simply as friends; they and all the others at the ARC whose lives Stephen had touched would be at the wake, later.

"Are you well enough to drive one of the Rovers?" Jenny asked. "I nearly broke a heel on it on the way over."

"I can manage." I let my gaze rest on her. She was nothing like my Claudia, whom I'd never see again. It was time to bury that, along with the rest of the past, and move on.

"What? Is my hair out of place?"

"No, you're fine." 

My leg hurt a little while driving, from muscles stiff with inaction, but I was grateful for the pain giving me something else to think of.

* * *

The preacher said the words. We watched as the coffin – with a symbolic rock from the destruction laid in its center, though the family knew nothing of it – was lowered, and the dirt moved over it. We laid flowers over the raw dirt and walked away.

Lester caught up with me. "Cutter, there's an anomaly. I'm sorry."

Great timing, I thought. "Aye. I'll gather them."

Connor, Jenny and Abby loaded themselves into the Rover, and I heard Connor chamber a round in his pistol, just in case.

* * *

It wasn't that far away – an abandoned farm, in the green belt just beyond where suburbs had been converting ancient farmland into housing. 

Simmons and Chapman and two SFs they'd acquired along the way followed us past the house, as Connor's portable anomaly detector led us to an overgrown paddock in the angle of two barns. The light of the anomaly was visible around the edges of the buildings, and suddenly winked out.

And in the spot where it had opened stood three people.

Myself, ten years older, and Helen at about the same age.

And Stephen, only a little older.

Alive.

Abby, next to me, grabbed Connor's arm. On the way here she'd exchanged her high heels for low trainers, but she looked more unsteady than she had in her heels.

"I suspect you'd be wanting some identification," my other self said. He reached into his pocket – the SFs aiming their rifles at him never wavered – and took out a big Swiss Army knife and a lumpy little pouch that proved to be one of those multiple-purpose tools that has pliers and a saw and everything. 

Abby sobbed, ran forward and threw herself at him; Connor followed close behind.

Helen had gray streaks in her hair, which was straight, shoulder length and professionally trimmed, not raggedly hacked off with a knife as the other Helen had done. The smile on her face was sweeter than any I'd ever seen on the Helen I'd married, and that told me this one was the one who came from the world of the ARC, just as the one now in Lester's custody came from the world where I'd been born.

"What, not a word?" Stephen's eyes were still as blue -- and alive. He strode toward me and wrapped me up in a hug, and I put my arms around him and held on.

He was solid, and breathing, living, his ribcage moving with his breath under my hands. 

"How –"

"Nick and Helen pulled me through an anomaly just as the raptors leaped at me. It's a long story." He pushed himself an armslength away, still holding my shoulders. "You look like bloody hell."

"I should. We just buried you. Your mum and dad, your brother, they're all down here for your funeral."

He hugged me again, this time with his eyes overflowing. "It's real, then. I'm home. We're all home."

"Aye, you're home." 

I pushed aside the more personal issue that was shoving itself into my head: since the ARC would have back its own Nicholas Cutter and Helen Farquhar Cutter, what would it need me for? That could wait for later, and for long talks with Lester.

Speaking of which, Lester should be here. I took out my mobile.

"James. You're going to want to be here for the party."

"What do you mean? The gathering at the Crow and Garter?"

"No, out here at this farm. Stephen's back, and he brought friends. You'd best tell Archie at the Crow and Garter that we'll need the whole place, not just the back room."

Stark stillness on the other end of the call. Then – "I'll be there in ten."

He was here in five, the helicopter landing on the road in front to let him out. 

By that time, the SFs had not only put their weapons aside but were getting handshakes from Cutter and kisses on the cheek from Helen, and introductions for those who hadn't met them before. Stephen had let go of me only to have been nearly bowled over by Abby and Connor, and gave them as good as he got. 

"I don't suppose you two have managed to stay out of trouble," Stephen said, when he could catch his breath.

"Trouble? It hasn't even been a fortnight," Connor protested.

Stephen blinked. "Sorry. For me, it's been nearly three years."

"Mr. Hart." Lester's voice was at its driest. "I must say, I never expected your survival skills to include resurrection." He closed in on Stephen as the others gave him space, and started with a handshake, then pulled him into a close, fast hug. "You must tell me how you did it."

"It wasn't me, James, it was Nick and Helen; they pulled me out just in time." He looked anxious for the first time since we arrived. "Did any of the creatures escape?"

"Thanks to some elegant software maneuvering by Connor, we had word of Leek's other creatures, and dealt with them." Lester smiled. "And soon as all of our people were out of the building, I called in a favor from the Eighth Airborne Division. I believe that whole section of warehouses is to be redeveloped soon." He moved toward the other Cutter and Helen. "I can't tell you how glad I am to see you both."

"James!" Helen threw her arms around him, and he let her. Lester reached a hand out to Cutter, who waited until Helen had disentangled herself, smiling hugely, and then drew Cutter in as well.

"You're hardly going to know what to do with two of us," he said, "considering how much trouble I used to make for you. I can't imagine my twin over there is any different."

"Now, now, " said Lester, "that's not so. The ARC would be pleased to acquire the services of Professor Nicholas Cutter's brother Arthur, and his wife, Eileen, if that's what they'd wish." A smile played around the corners of his mouth. "I have Barbara working out the details, just in case, back at the office. And if this isn't what you'd like to do, something else can be arranged."

I figured it was time for me to say something – but what can you say to yourself, another self, who has been under the hill and back again just as you have, even if the hills were different? And brought his faery wife home with him again, though she was from here to start with? Gram would have been able to make a fair story from this, though she would have been amused by the idea of two of me, as she said one was all she could manage.

"Welcome home." I offered my hand. "I don't think we've quite met before, though I daresay we know a great deal about each other." We shook hands, sizing each other up, and then the family sense of humor cut in and we hugged as well.

"Weirdly familiar," he said.

"Just so."

Stephen stepped in. "Nick, this is Helen Farquhar..."

"It's good to meet you," I said. I could be less boggled by her, I thought. 

"Oh, it's so good to meet you at last. Stephen has told us so much." She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. "Thank you for being his friend when he needed one."

"Ahem." Lester cleared his throat loudly. "Shall we all proceed to the Crow and Garter? And Stephen, if you will come with me first, I believe your family would very much like to see you."

* * *

***

About two hours later we were sitting in The Crow and Garter, where Lester had apparently told the owner and staff to just keep serving until everyone had had enough. As a result, platters of food kept appearing, being emptied, and reappearing, accompanied by enough liquid refreshment to float a navy. 

I'm not sure how Lester did it, but he managed to have Stephen's immediate family read in on the project, so that they were there, too, listening to all the stories while still looking somewhat shocked that he was back from the dead, as well as being several years older than when he last saw them a month or so earlier.

"—but what happened to you?" Abby was asking Cutter. "All we knew was that you went through the anomaly with the other Helen, and –"

"And then I came back, to everyone's shock, not least my own." I put in. 

"Would you believe me if I said I didn't know, exactly?" Cutter asked. "I've gone back over that day a million times and I am still not sure what happened. We went through to the other side, with the SFs, with the predator kits –"

"Nasty little gray ape-bat-shark-things," Stephen stage-whispered to his brother. "A bit like Cousin Gerald, except gray."

"I never thought Gerald was part bat," his brother commented, "other than the obvious."

Cutter kept talking through them. "—and the next thing I knew I was somewhere in the Paleolithic Era, looking at a mountain where she'd said there was a cave with supplies, and I was by myself."

"Was there a cave?" Connor asked.

Cutter nodded. "Yes, with a fire pit and wood and some dried meat, though god knows either what it was or how long it had been there. There was a spring in the back of the cave for water, which helped. I set up camp there, more or less – that firestarter you gave me saved my life more than once, Abby – and waited, but she never came." He paused. "When I woke the next day, and tried to think about what had happened, I started to wonder if she'd done something like that with everyone on that trip – all the SFs, marooned in different ages through different anomalies – but there's no way to know for sure." 

"How long were you there?" Lester asked. 

"More than a year by myself. You know, in some ways, it was the most idyllic vacation. I had plenty of fresh air, good food even if I had to provide it for myself – there were elk and mammoth and deer and all sorts of berries and greens – some of your wilderness lessons must have rubbed off on me, Stephen, because I didn't get sick on any of it. If I'd only had a working computer, I could've finished writing that textbook I started five years ago." An appreciative laugh went around the room. "I managed to acquire enough skins and furs to keep me warm in the winter, and it was a nasty cold winter, too. But in the spring, one day while I was fishing, this woman comes tramping up the stream bed, scaring the fish." He smiled at Helen, who took it as her cue.

"I think you all know I was chased into the anomaly by a mosasaur." She drew a breath. "There was another anomaly open near where I went in, so I went through that. It closed immediately afterward, and killed the mosasaur." She looked pensive. "It didn't taste like chicken, I must say. I took enough to dry over a fire, and kept going, since I didn't want to attract any predators. Fortunately, I was in an early enough era that there weren't a lot of them at that point. But I did encounter another traveler, a man from the mid-1700s, and shared the last of the mosasaur with him. He was half-crazed by loneliness and fear, and by a wound in his leg that was festering, no matter what I tried to do. He told me there were ghosts and spirits and monsters everywhere. When I found another anomaly and determined to go through it, he insisted on giving me some coins from his pouch, in case I might need them, but he wasn't strong enough to come with me. I didn't see another human being for probably six years – it's hard to keep track of time when you're going through it – until I happened upon Nick."

I was starting to get prickles up and down my spine. 

"We stayed in the cave for a while, testing out the odd bit of tech that the other Helen had handed me." Cutter paused. "Should I be worried about running into her again?"

"No." Lester said. "She won't be back."

Cutter looked relieved. "Anyway, we played with it until we got it to work. When it's working properly it doesn't just tell what time period you're going to, but how long the anomaly will be open, and whether there are other anomalies in the area. Sometimes it even tells where they're going to, but not always. And then we traveled – and we found that it doesn't just take you to different times in this universe, but to other nearby universes." He glanced at me, not unkindly. "I suspect some of you already knew that."

"Where else did you go?" I asked.

"We never managed to get back here until we picked up Stephen; the damned machine wouldn't connect till then, and then it wouldn't reconnect for three years. But in the interim we went to other Britains. Did you know there's one where there were two World Wars and a lot of rationing?" He shook his head in wonder. "Right. We didn't stay there long; we were recognized and found out that our counterparts were considered dead long ago, and it would just cause trouble if we stayed. So we moved on. There's a Britain that speaks German because George I refused to learn English and insisted that German be the national language, and other ones even stranger than that, and we didn't stay long in them, either. But we did find one where we were mostly comfortable. King Harry's Land, we called it. Easiest thing, to distinguish by rulers." He looked at Helen.

"It seems that the other Helen had been there already; in that world she's an historian with a sideline in gems and rare coins. And she's wealthy."

"How did you find all this out?" Connor asked.

Helen shrugged. "I did what anyone else would do – I looked her up online. There's a cybercafé not far from where the anomaly opened, and nobody looked twice at what I was wearing."

Lester caught my eye, and so did Stephen. I shrugged. "That seems reasonable."

"And then I went around to see her, at her apartment. The doorman recognized me and asked if I'd enjoyed my travels, which I said I had, very much, but I'd lost my key. He found me another one. I introduced Nick as my colleague, Dr. Arthur, visiting from the Colonies, and the doorman made him a key also."

"What did you do while you were there?" Lester asked.

"Well, first, we caught up on rest." Cutter grinned. "You've no idea what a luxury it is to be able to sleep without one eye open, and to buy food instead of having to catch it before something bigger than you gets there first." He waited until the comments died down. "Are you aware that the other Helen left supplies cached in all the worlds she visited, and in many of the time periods?"

"We found one of hers in the forest here," Abby said.

Cutter nodded. "She had another one, a big one, at that apartment. It had a ton of small things she'd stolen from other worlds. Little untraceable stuff, like old half-rubbed-off coins and unset gems. Once we found her list of buyers, we managed to live reasonably well, if frugally." He smiled. "It helped with getting me papers, as well, though I didn't use them much. But the big find was her notebook." He reached into his jacket pocket and took out a ragged leather-bound notebook that was tied together with broken bits of string, leather strips, and what looked like twisted horsehair. "She must have been in a hurry the last time she left."

"Or she didn't want to bring it here, in case I found it," I said. "It would prove beyond all doubt that she wasn't the woman who started in this universe. However, we had independent proof of that, as it was."

My shadow twin's eyebrow quirked upward, but he left it at that. 

"Dare I ask what's in that notebook?" Lester said, leaning forward to get a closer look at the scarred cover and the brown-stained edges of the pages.

"Everything," Helen told him. "She's as meticulous a note-taker as I am; fortunately, the code she writes in is one I devised as a child, to keep my aunt out of my journal. Our paths must have been similar to that point, at least." She smiled. "I've transcribed it." And she took out of her own pocket a paper notebook and two computer disks of different sizes. "Some pages are very difficult to interpret, but almost everything is clear. Unfortunately, toward the end, she's completely … what's the technical term? Bonkers. Crazy. Insane."

"We'd noticed," Lester said drily. "But you're leaving out how you managed to rescue Stephen."

All eyes turned toward Stephen, who threw up his hands. "Don't ask me. I was expecting to die any second; I have no idea how they did it."

"It's a setting on the controller – very occasionally, it will show you a glimpse of the other side, what you'd be walking into. And this time it showed Stephen backing away from the door and standing there while all those beasts closed in on him." He shared a glance with Helen. "Helen hit the 'on' switch and we reached through and pulled him out, and by the time I hit the off switch she was already putting the tourniquet on his leg."

Stephen's eyes were focused off in the distance, recalling what had occurred. "I woke up in hospital, somewhere, but Cutter was sitting there next to me. It took a bit to realize which of you it was, and where I was."

"We told the authorities that we found him in the forest, after he'd been attacked by some animal, and that we had come right in to report it." Helen said, her face composed as if dealing with officious authorities were the norm. "He was taken to hospital immediately, of course, and we came with him, but then there were the officials who kept kicking the case up to higher offices, until we were talking to the King's Minister of Security, who finally told us that yes, they did know about the anomalies. The government had a spy satellite focused on every one of them that they knew about, and they knew that we had been from somewhere else – but because we'd behaved as reasonable citizens, they weren't going to do anything to us. Apparently a good-sized fraction of the population had come through at one time or another." She gave Lester a level look. "You look much happier here than you did there, James."

"Oh, no."

"Oh, yes. Over there, your response to the presence of anomalies was to place severe restrictions on the teaching of physics and relativity; only those scientists who were fully trusted by the government were allowed to study them." Helen shrugged. "But in other ways the other you was first rate; he made sure Stephen had all necessary documents and the best of care, and issued us a small living allowance, in case of emergency."

"Hmph. I'm glad I could do some things right."

"And then we couldn't get back. The controller had fallen out of my pocket and got damaged somehow during the rescue, and needed repair. It took time to do that, and time for Stephen to heal and for his new leg to be grafted on –"

Half the crowd looked revulsed, the other half interested.

"—and then I had to get back in shape," Stephen cut in. "And all the while I kept worrying about what all of you were going to get into without me to get you out of it."

"Hah!" Abby, Connor and I said at the same time.

"We wound up all our business there, just in case," Helen said. "I made a bargain with the Minister of Security to have their laboratory's assistance in fixing the controller, while giving them the right to copy it, but with the understanding that they use it only very carefully, which was agreed. I spent a week or so telling them what I understood of the settings, and where each one went, so that they would have a little advanced knowledge of what they might get into. That was the price for our ability to get back."

"Do you trust him with it?" I asked her.

She thought about it carefully before raising her eyes to mine. "If it were up to Perry Lester, the thing would be destroyed. But he started out as a scientist, and he understands that when questions are raised they will eventually be answered. So, considering the constraints he's using, yes." And then she moved her gaze, that intent deep look, to Lester. "And you and I are going to have to talk before I let anyone here touch it."

Lester nodded. 

It was all starting to be too much for me – this day that had started with my friend's funeral and was ending not only with his resurrection but with the homecoming of this universe's version of me and of his Helen as well. All the travelers who had gone under the hill had come home, except for me, and I was in exile. I was, in fact, living in their home, which they would undoubtedly want back.

I murmured something apologetic about needing a breath of air, and found my way out the door. 

Outside, the long golden afternoon had moved on into sunset, and the first stars were lying like diamonds against the cobalt velvet sky. The air was cooling and crisp, and a few birds were calling in the trees near the pub. I sat down on the old bench under the trees and tried not to think of anything for a while.

Impossible, of course.

Was there going to be room for me in this brave new world on the morrow? Should I consider going back under the hill again, take the chance that I might be able to find my way back to the world where I'd started? I hated the idea of having to find my way through anomalies as an inter-universe vagrant, but what choice did I have?

Was I ever going to find myself at home again? Anywhere?

I didn't need much, really. I needed somewhere to lay my head, and work to do to keep the bills paid. Hopefully, the work would be something I liked and could do reasonably well.

Quiet footsteps in the grass, coming closer. 

Stephen sat down on the other end of the bench. He didn't say anything for a while, but he'd never had trouble with silences.

"You all right?"

"I don't know," I admitted, running a hand through my hair. "It's occurred to me that there may not be room in this world for two Nick Cutters."

"Don't be stupid. Of course there is." He smiled at me, that sweet smile with the hint of wickedness in it. "I want to see what happens with the two of you start to collaborate."

"You're sure about that?"

He nodded. "Yeah. You're not the same man; you've got different strengths now. It can only be good."

"Well, you'd know."

Another smile. "If you're wondering where to sleep tonight…" He held up his own keys. "You can have my place, if you want it."

"I thought—"

"We sorted some things out, over in King Harry's Land. I'm with them. Have been, for two years now."

"And you're happy?"

He nodded. "It all feels right."

I took the key and turned it over in my hand. "We can swap stuff later. I suspect your family is going to want you for a while."

"They're still in shock, but I think they're recovering. I'll go back with them for a week or two, and then we can figure things out."

"So you're going to come back to the ARC?" I asked.

"Sure. Where else is all this experience going to be useful?" But his face sobered, and he looked away for a moment. "Nick, please don't try to go home, back to your time."

"You can read me that well?" I sighed. "Should I ask why?"

He stared at his hands, then up at me. "Before they rescued me, Cutter and Helen traveled, and they got to your world – and ran into the other version of Connor there. He said that Helen had come back several years after you left, when Stephen was helping your brother get your house ready to sell, but it was really to see who was left. Nobody could prove anything, but he was sure that she had been to blame for several deaths, including James Lester, Claudia Brown and …" his voice faltered, "me."

I sat still, taking this in. 

"Connor told them to tell you this: 'Look, Cutter, I hope you can find a place where you will be happy and have a good life. Don't look back; there's nothing here. Well, only one thing – Abby named our first boy Nick, after you. And we both understand if we never see you again. We'd rather have you safe.'"

I couldn't help tearing up at that. Brave, brave lad, that Connor. Helen had always underestimated him, and it had saved his life. But it was hard to know that Claudia was gone, and the first Lester I'd known. 

Stephen's hand on my shoulder brought me back. 

"You going to be all right?"

"Aye. I will be, in a bit."

"All right." He stood, looking over at me. "You know, if you ever need anything –"

"Yeah, yeah. Go back in there and talk to your mum."

"She still wants you to come visit, you know. Come on up to Scotland with us tomorrow," he urged. "You don't have to decide anything for a while."

The thought of misty hills and time spent fishing, or just taking time away from it all and sitting with a book by some stream … it was the most tempting idea I'd heard in a while. I could visit Gram's grave, while I got the chance, providing it was still to be found somewhere near where I'd know to look, and tell her a story about going under the hill and coming back again.

"I might do that, at that."

"Great! I'll tell Mum." Stephen stepped away. "And I'll owe you a pint when you get in."

"Make it a dram, and you're on."

The stars were coming out, in the same places they'd been when Gram told me her stories. There, the Big Dipper, with the little one tagging along; there the great snake of Draco, and Casseiopeia. She'd had other names for them, of course, old Scottish ones that I'd forgotten, but I could take time to remember them again, under this sky.

I pushed the pub door open. Over by the piano in the corner, Connor was leading the SFs in raucous untuneful songs, not that anyone cared a whit. Abby was watching, indulgently, while she talked with Helen and Stephen's mother. Stephen's father and brother were in deep discussion about something with Gunnery Sergeant Simmons, and a handful of the scientists were raising a toast about something. Jenny was standing closest to the door, watching all of it over a half-full glass of wine.

"A happy ending, for once," she said, turning her observation toward me. "You all right?" 

"Aye," I told her. "I'm home."

* * *

We shall not cease from exploration  
And the end of all our exploring  
Will be to arrive where we started  
And know the place for the first time.  
Through the unknown, remembered gate  
When the last of earth left to discover  
Is that which was the beginning…  
Quick, now, here, now, always –  
A condition of complete simplicity  
(Costing not less than everything)  
And all shall be well and  
All manner of thing shall be well  
When the tongues of flame are in-folded  
Into the crowned knot of fire  
And the fire and the rose are one.

\-- from "Little Gidding", in _Four Quartets_ , by T.S. Eliot.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks very much to Wyomingnot and Zlabya, who beta read this monster above and beyond the call of friendship, and whose suggestions made all the difference.


End file.
